One Which Makes The Heart Run Over
by GuardianSaiyoko
Summary: There's something very wrong with Beast Boy and it's up to Raven, who has been reluctantly appointed team therapist, to find out what. BBRae.
1. Dying of the Light

**One Which Makes The Heart Run Over**

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_"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over."  
-James Boswell_

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**1.**

**rage, rage against the dying of the light...**

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"Raven, have you seen Beast Boy?" Raven didn't respond. Robin touched her shoulder lightly, causing her to slit her eyes open and glare at him.

"What?"

"I asked if you'd seen Beast Boy."

"He's in my room."

"I'd like you to search for him in the Tower- wait. What?"

"He's in my room. He's been in there a while."

"And you didn't mention this earlier, because...?"

Raven shrugged. "You didn't ask."

Robin sank onto the couch beside where she was hovering. He ran his hand across his eyes wearily. "Raven. Why is Beast Boy in your room? One, you don't let _anyone_ in there, ever, and two, I don't think I've seen BB in a couple of _days_. Has he been in there the whole time?"

"Yep."

"Raven, I'm gonna need some answers, here."

Raven turned on him suddenly. "I haven't asked you what's going on when Star walks out of your room instead of her own every morning."

Robin didn't even flinch. "But that's different. You barely tolerate Beast Boy. Why's he been in you room?"

Raven floated down to settle on the couch. "There's something wrong with him."

Robin raised an eyebrow. "Like what? What could be wrong with him that he can't stay in his own room?"

"I think…you'd better follow me."

Robin scrambled off the couch as Raven swept through the hallway. He stopped uneasily when she halted in front of her door. "Rae, are you sure you're okay with-"

"Just get in here."

"Um, all right," Robin said hesitantly. He edged in the door after her, wincing when it slammed shut. Raven floated lightly to the floor and walked over to her bed, where she pulled the sheet back carefully to reveal a small green cat curled up on the pillow. Robin stared. "Beast Boy?"

Raven sat down and the cat stretched and climbed onto her lap, rubbing his head against her hand, arching his back and purring. Raven pet him slowly while Robin's jaw hit the floor.

"Um. Explanations would be nice, now. "

The cat pawed at Raven's cape, mewed loudly, and settled himself comfortably in her lap. Raven placed one hand protectively over his back. "I'm not entirely certain. He knocked on the door the other night, upset, and before I could ask him what was wrong he had changed into this cat. He…won't change back." Well, he wouldn't, or he _couldn't_- Raven knew better than to speculate on that out loud with their volatile leader in the room.

Robin approached the bed, but the cat lifted its head and hissed at him angrily. "Whoa, BB, calm down!" He addressed Raven. "Any idea _why_ he won't change?"

Raven shook her head slowly. "I wasn't really comfortable with snooping in his head at first; I wasn't worried enough to try until this morning."

"And?"

"I _know_ this is Beast Boy. I _saw_ him change. But..." Raven made an uncharacteristically vague gesture.

Robin very tentatively reached out a hand towards the cat. He started to hiss, but Raven pressed lightly against his back and he calmed down to look at her. Robin lightly ran his fingers through the green fur and frowned. "He's…awfully thin."

"If he were a real cat, he would be considered malnourished."

"What happened when you tried to scan him this morning?"

Raven tilted her head up to look at him. "I got the same feeling I would get from a normal cat. Except for green fur and poor health, Beast Boy appears to _be_ a normal cat."

Beast Boy suddenly twisted out of Raven's grasp and bit down on Robin's hand. Robin yelped and shook him off. "We should get him to the med bay, have Cy take a look at him."

"You're welcome to try," Raven said dryly.

"Huh?" Robin started to reach for Beast Boy again, then thought better off it and retracted his hand. Raven stood, cradling the cat in her arms.

"Watch."

She tried to set him down on the bed. He leapt up into her arms again with a frightened mew. "He won't leave. At least, not yet. Trust me- I've tried. You'll have to bring Cyborg and any equipment in here."

"Maybe not. I have an idea."

"Oh," Raven said unenthusiastically.

"You've managed to morph Beast Boy before. Do you think you can do it again?"

Raven snapped a glare at him. "That was dark magic, Robin."

He looked at Beast Boy silently, then back at her. After a long moment she sighed.

"Only because it's Beast Boy."

"All I ask is that you try."

She settled on the bed again and tried to push the cat off her lap. He wouldn't leave and she sighed again. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" The cat bulged in the middle, flattened for a second, and finally stretched out full-length to resolve slowly into Beast Boy, still huddled against Raven. He suddenly buried his head deeper into her stomach and curled up with his back to Robin, still mostly covered by Raven's cloak. Hesitant again, the Boy Wonder placed a hand on his back, but drew back when Beast Boy flinched.

"Beast Boy?" Raven sounded uncertain. She mimicked Robin's action and placed her hand on his back. He shuddered and went still. She glanced up at Robin. When she spoke again she sounded determined. "Get the others. I'm going to try and get inside his mind, like I did when you were seeing Slade." Robin flinched slightly. Raven hunched over and drew her cloak tighter around Beast Boy. "Go. Now."

Robin left.

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**GuardianSaiyoko: **Constructive criticism is very much appreciated. If you liked this, go read ShinobiCyrus' _Destiny's Thread's_- 'tis excellent.

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**April 21st, 2008-** Re-reading this to get a handle on where I'm going with the epilogue. As long as I'm re-reading anyway, I thought I would take the opportunity to go back and do some editing- primarily for typos but I'm doing a tiny bit of content editing too. If this shows up in your inboxes (I'm not totally sure if it does or not) sorry for the sudden flood.


	2. Don't Be My Friend

**Disclaimer:** Don't own'em. You'd know if I did. Much thanks to my beta, ShinobiCyrus. The song Bad Boy belongs to Cascada. Not a songfic chapter; you'll see.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_"Amidst the mists and coldest frosts  
With barest wrists and stoutest boasts  
He thrusts his fists against the posts  
And still insists he sees the ghosts."  
-English tongue twister_

**2. don't be my friend**

Raven took a deep breath and steeled herself. First, she decided, she'd better see if talking would accomplish anything. She wasn't really in the mood for a trip through _anyone's_ mind, much less Beast Boy's, unless it was absolutely necessary. She gently raised her hand to his shoulder and tilted his head up to look at her, sliding her cloak all the way off of her and over him as she did so. Green framed in blue gazed up at her, but his eyes seemed… off, somehow. They didn't hold their normal energy. In fact, they were the same white emptiness she was used to seeing while he was transformed. She shook him slightly, but pupils did not appear.

"O-kay…this is a bad sign."

Looking at him again, Raven shivered slightly at the way her cape enveloped him. She knew Beast Boy was small, but…this was ridiculous. He looked like he could disappear into the cape's folds entirely.

"Beast Boy? You in there?"

Well, now he was _looking_ at her, but he clearly wasn't _seeing_ her. Not an improvement. "Beast Boy, it's Raven. Raven. Can you hear me? You need to snap out of it." _This isn't working. Maybe if I make him laugh? It worked with Mad Mod's hypnoscreens. Repeatedly. How do I make him laugh?_ "Why did the chicken cross the road."

Nothing.

"Because …" Hmm. Probably should have thought of a punchline. Well, if it worked once… "To beat up the idiot telling jokes about it."

Nothing. No reaction. He didn't even twitch.

"Right, well, my funny quotient has been used up for the day. So…" Raven paused and stared at Beast Boy's blank eyes again. "…Looks like I'm going in."

She let go of him, tried and failed not to notice that he was now burrowing into her stomach and shivering, closed her eyes and began to chant. "Azarath…" She stopped. As soon as her concentration had slipped Beast Boy had grown a tail. "Um. Azarath, Metrion…" He had fur. It looked like she could either let him stay human and not know what was wrong, or find out and have him revert to a cat. She sighed. "…Zinthos."

It was immediately clear that she would have to go deeper than she had with Robin. Beast Boy's surface thoughts were comprised only of things like warmth and food; the thoughts his cat form would be having. She could have seen through his eyes easily, he wasn't putting up the merest barrier to her thoughts in his head, but she was fairly certain that she wouldn't see anything. She tried it anyway, briefly, because Robin in his paranoia could ask, but saw only her own cloak. She went deeper, past the surface memories of food fights and fist fights, to the memories that were underneath- the ones that were most important to him. Robin's had been his parent's deaths and Batman's adoption of him; she had very little idea of what Beast Boy's would be and that frightened her. But first, she had to reach them, which was much more difficult than she would have thought. His memories were locked away deep.

Finally she touched down on a dark plane. It was perfectly circular, glossy black, and suspended in nothing. Beast Boy, or some incarnation of Beast Boy, stood on the edge of it with his back to her. She crossed to him swiftly and laid a hand on his shoulder. He didn't turn and she didn't move; she spent a long time just listening to the voices that were whirling out of the darkness.

A woman's voice tumbled through the dark, singing softly. She listened closely to the words, but only made out snatches, what she thought was a chorus.

"…be my bad boy, be my man, be my weekend lover, but don't be my friend. You can be my bad boy, but understand…I don't need you in my life again."

"Wow," she said quietly, flexing her fingers on his shoulder. He flinched, even worse than his physical form had when Robin touched him. "Somehow, I'm not surprised to find that there's music in your soul…but I _am_ surprised that it's darker than my music."

"If you want memories, they're down there." His voice was dark. She hadn't known his voice could _be_ so frighteningly dark. Well, she had, she'd heard it before in fights and especially when the fights had been with Terra…._Terra._ What if Terra was what this was all about?

"…remember the feelings, remember the day. My stone heart was breaking, my love ran away…"

It was _Terra's_ voice singing so darkly in the depths of his unconsciousness. Terra's voice, now that she listened, berating him softly beneath the tones of the song. There was another, deeper, voice, but she was unable to hear it from the level she was at. Which meant she had to go even farther. How deep did Beast Boy's mind and soul go?

She moved to stand beside him, cloak fluttering slightly from her movement. It was the only wind that touched the platform. Beast Boy stood perfectly still, and she'd never, ever seen him perfectly still before. It was more unsettling, almost, than everything else combined. "Down there, huh." There was absolutely nothing beneath them. It was an endless pit of black.

Or so she thought, until Beast Boy's soulself- she assumed that was what it was- raised his arm and pointed to a spot far, far below that pulsed with green light. "Yeah. There." His voice was dark and tired, but also so much younger than she was used to, and it sent shivers crawling down her spine.

She closed her eyes, squeezed his shoulder one last time, held her breath and stepped into the dizzying abyss.

It shouldn't have frightened her. It _shouldn't_ have. She could fly, for Azar's sake, but it frightened her anyway. She dropped quickly towards the light and slowed her descent until she was floating lightly above it. The voices were stronger here, but she still couldn't make out the male voice.

"You said you'd be my friend no matter what, remember?"

"…You once made this promise to stay by my side, but after some time you just pushed me aside. You never thought that a girl could be strong… Now I'll show you how to go on…."

"Beast Boy," Raven said aloud, "this is a _horrible_ song. Now wonder you're having issues." It _was _a horrible song. The worst of it was that for all the terrible words Terra's voice sang over and over again, the song had a cheerful, upbeat tune. Raven plunged into the green light, not the healthy bright green she'd come to associate with Beast Boy but a sickly glowing green; it wrapped over her and enveloped her in a wash of colors and sound. Robin's mind had been organized, his memories all distinctly separated. Beast Boy's mind was not.

Beast Boy's voice struck her first, followed by Terra's. "Terra, stop! We're your friends!"

"I don't have any friends, remember?"

There was a memory-flash and she was hanging in a fissure, holding on for dear life, terrified because soon the walls were going to slam shut and…"Hope you're not expecting a goodbye kiss." The walls slammed together. There was an instant of blinding, crushing pain, physical and mental and emotional, and then she was a gopher and digging her way out and suddenly Raven was thrust into another memory.

"…Just you and me, then, huh? Cool." She was circling Cyborg, desperate for attention, hoping _so hard_ that maybe she'd found someone who wasn't going to turn him away because- he was green. He had pointy ears and fangs. "I—I haven't really had anybody to hang out with since I quit the Doom Patrol. This is gonna be fun. Can we play video game—" And it _hurt_ to hear that child's voice fall from Beast Boy's lips, more than she would have expected, but it was _nothing like_ the hurt that came when Cyborg whirled and snapped a negation at his eager hopeful voice. It was Beast Boy's hurt, but it felt like her own-

-and then there was another bright memory-flash and she was just waking up, groaning, on a soft pillow and why was it soft? The bed was hard and lumpy, the animal part of her liked it that way and oh God she was wearing a _collar_ and _nonotacollar I'm not a pet I'mnotI'mnotI'm_NOT! A gravelly voice, loud, very loud. "Bad dog. You should not try to escape." And she was pawing at the collar, tugging at it, too panic-stricken at first to even realize that she was still a dog not human, and finally she shook her head and changed to her own form, the one that had _hands_, and kept pulling at the collar but it wouldn't come off. She kept trying to tell the…thing that it was wrong, she wasn't his dog, she wasn't _anyone's_ dog, and it wouldn't listen. Finally she shifted, to a tiger, that was strong and usually frightening, and lunged- but the collar and the leash brought him up short. She lifted the leash in one massive paw and stared at it _getitoffgetitoffgetitoff_ and then turned and kept lunging and then cycling through animals and _nothing worked_ and "You can change into any pet? Any pet Soto wants?" _Not a pet I'm not a pet- but-_

"If I do, will you let me go?"

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm!" So she changed and the thing clapped and she got a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach when it said "Change!" again, happily, giddily.

Nervously, pointing at the collar, "Uh, hello, aren't we forgetting something?" and its brows lowered and shit, now it's angry.

"Bad dog! Soto said change!"

"And Beast Boy said-!" Nothing, because pain suddenly ran roughshod through every part of his body and he forced the change to escape it.

Suddenly, Beast Boy's thoughts changed course, intensifying and nearly knocking Raven from the memory because suddenly she heard as plain as her own voice but in his head-"T_hey're coming…they're on their way…maybe they don't like me but I'm part of the team so they have to save me…right? Right?_" And then came the final thought that sent Raven spinning to the next memory. "_Help me, Raven!_ Please!"

Next memory- she saw herself, standing over him, when he seemed so small and- of course, the day they all met. She had protected him. She hadn't known how shocked and grateful he'd been, though, he'd never said it. Such gratitude and respect for _her_…This time she was the one who chose to switch memories and saw a split second of Terra's voice and felt the anguished cry of "Terra!" hurled from her with more emotion than she'd known could be in one word. Then finally she was out of the memories altogether, back on the dark plane with the soulself that was now sitting on the edge with his legs hanging over, and now she could make out all the voices. The masculine voice was Slade, and it was saying the same phrase over and over again.

"Perhaps she wanted to keep you…as a _pet_." And the way the word _pet_ was said, full of anger and loathing, seemed to echo again and again in the empty space.

"Raven!" For a moment she thought the soulself had said it, and she whirled towards him, irrationally afraid he would jump, and then she realized it was coming from outside them both. "_Raven!_" It was Robin. And although she sincerely doubted he knew it, none of his Titans could ever ignore their 'fearless leader,' especially not when he was distressed. So she took a leap up and felt Beast Boy's soulself give her a push to help her back into herself.

On the way out there was a tangle of colors that hadn't been there on the way in. She shot through it before she could help herself and awakened gasping. That had been something she had never gotten from Robin, ever; she had sensed exactly how Beast Boy felt about every other member of the team. It left her confused and disoriented and maybe even a little alarmed.

Robin was standing over her, looking concerned. For a split second a strange image of Robin-without-a-mask superimposed itself, but she shook her head and noticed that Cyborg and Starfire stood on either side of him, eyeing the door and clearly not comfortable with being in her room. Starfire was holding a yowling green cat at arm's length, looking puzzled.

"Please- green cats are not common on your planet. Yes?" Beast Boy tried to twist around to bite her and failed. She looked crestfallen. "Is it…always so angry?"

Raven shook her head silently, not quite sure what to put into words for a second. Then, "Give him here. He isn't an it- he's Beast Boy." Starfire looked shocked now, but she quickly deposited the hissing cat in Raven's outstretched arms. Raven was surprised to find herself immediately drawing him close, almost protectively. He calmed down and started contentedly nibbling her cloak sleeve. She let him.

"I thought Beast Boy was in his room," Starfire said softly, surprise colouring her voice. "Otherwise I would not have behaved so."

Raven only shook her head, unable to summon up the words to explain to Starfire. "Robin," she said shortly instead. "You didn't tell them."

He raised one hand partway to his head, like he was going to scratch the back of his head and changed his mind, and looked sheepish. "I…had kinda hoped you would've been able to sort things out by now."

She eyed him for a minute, then shot a meaningful look at Beast Boy and back at him. "Not as easy as you might think."

She could almost pinpoint the exact moment when he switched from just plain Robin to Robin, the leader of the Titans. Almost. "All right, team. We're not sure what's wrong with Beast Boy, or who could have done it to him, so we need to be careful."

Raven stared down at the tiny green cat nestled in her arms. She could have hidden him from view simply by placing both hands over him. "I know what's wrong with him."

Robin stopped speaking.

She looked up at him slowly. "And I know who did it to him." She cut him off when he started to respond. "He did it to himself." She couldn't see Robin's eyes, but she was pretty certain she knew what they looked like right at that moment. "And Robin, it could have been prevented." She could _feel _him stop breathing and knew why. Beast Boy was _his_; his charge, his friend, his teammate. They all were. He was responsible for them and he'd failed. Now she felt terrible, because she was using that knowledge to make sure he would agree with her.

She saw him deflate from _leader_ to _Robin_. "Why? And how could we have stopped it?"

"He was under so much emotional and mental stress that eventually his powers just…took over. Animals don't feel stress the way humans do, so his body changed into something less harmful to it." She paused. "From now on, I think we all need to have therapy sessions once a week at least. I'll try and heal Beast Boy, but I don't know if I can. We _don't_ want to see this happen to anyone else. Twice a week sessions would be better, but that still leaves someone with only one night a week."

"Even then, that leaves someone out," Cyborg pointed out. "There's five of us, Rae."

"I know." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "I'm going to be the therapist."

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**GuardianSaiyoko:** I'm amazed and flattered at the response I've gotten for this. This is a new fandom for me, so I'm not totally sure what I'm doing. I'm thrilled to know that this is an original idea. I'm in college, so updates may be a littlle sporadic. As for what I'm doing watching and writing about Teen Titans in college- I just moved across the country from two/four brothers, depending on how you look at it, to my own apartment with a cat. It's quiet and I'm bored. So, you get fanfiction.

The next update should come fairly fast, seeing as it's partially written already. After that, I'll see how the writing goes vs. the studying.

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**April 21st,** **2008- **Edited to fix some typos and to better explain Starfire's behaviour. I am still in school here, and it's only gotten harder the farther along in the program I get, but I have every intention of finishing this. I have every intention of finishing _all _my stories- some just take longer than others.

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	3. Dream as Though

**Disclaimer:** Sure, I own'em. And if you believe that, I'm dating Catwoman.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over **

_Dream as though you'll live forever. Live as though you'll die today.  
-Anonymous_

**3. **

**dream as though you'll live forever  
**

Robin stayed long after the others had gone. He was the one who would have one session a week, as she had known he would. He probably needed them the most, out of him and Starfire and Cyborg, but he was the leader so he would take the only one-night-a-week session. She did manage to convince him that it should be two hours rather than an hour as the other's sessions were. Robin's would be tomorrow.

"Even if the session are disrupted due to a fight," Raven said evenly, "it's important that we still have them, no matter how late that night."

Robin nodded. "Agreed." His eyes slipped to Beast Boy, contentedly settled in her lap and purring. "There's something you aren't saying about this. What is it?'

_I had hoped I could get away without telling you._ "He thinks he'll make a better pet than a team member." Robin's fists clenched and his voice dropped a level or two.

"Who gave him that idea!"

_And I really, _really _hoped I wouldn't have to tell you _that. "Slade did." She continued, quickly, before Robin could say any of the dozen things she knew flashed through his mind at those words. "While we were fighting Sladebots in the Tower, Beast Boy was at an abandoned park with Terra- and he was fighting Slade." All that had been packed into one short memory, one of the ones buried deepest and hurting him the most. His memories were like shrapnel… "Slade made a comment to him about how maybe Terra wanted to keep him as a pet. That fed off the memories he had of that creature Soto thinking he was a pet, and then his mind latched onto the idea….and he's been getting worse ever since." She absently ran a hand along the soft fur. "When's the last time he ate properly? Does anyone even know?"

Silently, Robin shook his head. "It's hard to know when he buys his own food. No one else eats tofu, so no one notices if he buys less or eats less." He leaned against the wall, eyes downcast. He was still uncomfortable about being in her room, she knew; she'd gradually gotten more lenient about letting them in, but it was usually only Starfire that ever _did_ come in. She'd been startled when Beast Boy had knocked on her door.

"Well, is there anything you can do for him? Besides the therapy?" Robin looked torn.

"I'll do what I can." Raven's eyes closed slowly as she considered what she could do. "Which isn't much. I can Dreamwalk, but it's not usually a good idea. It leaves me almost completely without rest. I would only be able to do that safely once, maybe twice, a week." She opened her eyes again and groaned inwardly at the expression on his face.

"What's…" Robin tasted the unfamiliar word. "…Dreamwalking?"

Raven sighed and gently shifted the cat from her lap to the pillow, sliding her cloak all the way around him. He mewed sadly as he was put down. "It means that instead of _my_ dreams, I can dream his. However, any time I do so, it will essentially leave me without sleep."

He blinked at her and she could sense the exact moment when it clicked with him. "Oh. Because it isn't actually sleeping that matters, it's dreaming."

She nodded. He rose slowly from the wall and eyed the door, then glanced back at her. His eyes flickered from her to the small green cat curled up in her cloak and sleeping on her pillow. "Where's he going to sleep tonight?"

"The same place he slept the last two nights, Robin," she sighed. "Right where he is."

"That's not really proper."

_You can take your 'proper' and stuff it, Robin. _"He's a cat. Right now that's _all _ he is. Until I can heal him- if I can heal him- he's better off staying here than sleeping by himself in his own room." Robin still didn't look convinced. "Look, I can help him if he stays here." She supposed she could have brought up where Starfire had been sleeping but that hardly seemed fair to Star.

She didn't have to. The appeal to Beast Boy's health did it. Robin's eyes slid shut. "Fine." He hesitated an instant. "You morphed him to human before I left. Why did he change back?"

"Human body doesn't mean human mind."

"I was kinda afraid of that. If you don't mind- could you do it again? Could you show me?"

"I would prefer not to." She stared down at Beast Boy. Against the dark pillow, the green fur was bright. He looked very, very small and young and she knew that even if he changed he would still look small and young.

"Raven."

She sighed again and concentrated. Changing Beast Boy when he wouldn't even change himself was much more difficult than Robin seemed to realize. After a long moment, the cat slowly reshaped himself into human form. She was right; he still looked little, looked lost in the expanse of fabric. He actually let out a startled _mew_ when he finished changing, which was odd to hear from his human form. Raven looked at Robin. Robin crossed the room and laid a hand on Beast Boy's side, gently.

"BB? You okay?"

The changeling shuddered and flipped awake, crouched warily on the pillow. His eyes were the same blankness they'd been before , but Robin hadn't actually seen them before. Clearly, he did now; he took a sharp step backward, masked eyes widening.

Beast Boy hissed.

Raven saw him shift his weight in time and caught the younger Titan as he sprang at Robin; her concentration broken, Beast Boy changed back. She held on to the angry cat and drew him back towards her.

"_Why _ does he attack everyone but you?" Robin asked, frustrated.

She shrugged. "I have no idea. He did the same thing when he was the Beast, though. Maybe it's related?"

"Maybe." Robin turned to leave, pausing in the doorway. She had to strain to hear him. "Please, if there's anything you think would help- anything- _try it_." The door clicked shut and she exhaled slowly.

"I will," she told the closed door.

She settled slowly onto the bed, releasing Beast Boy and pulling the covers up close to her chin as she did so. After a long moment, she sat up and grabbed her cloak, dislodging Beast Boy who had just decided it would make a good place to sleep. She tugged at it as he decided to swipe at the edge with his claws; he hooked it and tried to yank it back with a triumphant "Meow!"

"Why couldn't you have been a _declawed_ cat," she muttered half-heartedly as she finally pulled her cape free from the green furball, the fabric now sporting a neat line of tiny holes. She sank down and twisted onto her side, closing her eyes. Before she fell asleep she felt the cat climb onto her side and settle there comfortably, just as he'd done the past few nights. She had to admit, it was comforting to have the warm weight and to feel Beast Boy's heartbeat.

She couldn't help but think that it might have been more comfortable if he hadn't been purring.

She wanted to try Dreamwalking tonight. Hopefully, no one would attack tomorrow; hopefully it would just be another of the days they all spent holed up in the Tower, playing cards, videogames, volleyball and basketball on the roof, training. They actually all managed to keep remarkably busy when they weren't out fighting.

…Of course, with Beast Boy still a cat, the teams would be uneven and the videogames would be played by Cyborg alone. Robin would feel too guilty playing them; probably Cyborg would as well. Beast Boy was his best friend and this wasn't something any of Cy's technology could even begin to fix.

Raven calmed her thoughts, ground and centered, and began repeating her mantra silently. _Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos. _ She hadn't been exaggerating when she told Robin that Dreamwalking was difficult. Had she not been used to meditating daily, she doubted she would have been able to accomplish it. It required a careful balance between a meditative trance and true sleep; when she reached that balance, she should be able to sense the dreams of others at the edge of her perception. She knew when she was asleep enough to dream and awake enough to shift into another's dream. Since Beast Boy had already been in _her _mind before, it wasn't too difficult to shift her sleeping self into _his _mind.

She slipped straight past the obsidian platform of before; with him asleep, it was deserted. That wasn't where she was going. The light at the bottom of the inky blackness had changed; no longer memories, the dream-colors were interwoven, bright orange around a healthier green than before. For the second time, she plunged into the light.

There were two ways to Dreamwalk that she knew of, as either an observer or an active participant within the dream. She didn't have enough experience to control or predict which it would be.

She found herself seated comfortably just above the stairs in the Tower's living room. It took her a moment of glancing around to determine where Beast Boy was.

Robin was sitting on the couch and trying to teach Starfire a card game. His mask was off, but his facial features were blurry; Beast Boy may have dreamed him with his mask off but he'd never actually _seen_ it off. His mind filled in the blanks as best as it could.

Beast Boy was lying on the couch, eyes closed, his head resting against Robin's thigh. That seemed odd, especially since he was staying still, but the dream didn't seem bad so far. Raven drifted a little closer to the couch. Robin was gently ruffling Beast Boy's hair with one hand, but didn't seem to be paying attention to him otherwise. She had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Sure enough, when she looked, Beast Boy was wearing a faded leather collar.

The Titan alert went off, Robin leapt up and dislodged Beast Boy and scattered the cards, Starfire immediately flew for the exit, Beast Boy fell from the couch and landed on his hands and knees. The dream's exiting rush was swift and silent, except for when Robin paused in the doorway to shout, "Beast Boy! Guard!"

Then the Tower was empty, except for Raven hovering and Beast Boy slowly climbing to his feet. Almost as soon as he had done so he morphed into a German Shepherd and settled himself in front of the exit.

Raven flew over to him and set down next to him. She reached a hand out to the green fur and was deeply relieved when she felt it ruffle beneath her hand; that meant she was actively participating in the dream, which in turn meant she could affect how it ended. "Beast Boy, they need you out there. _We_ need you."

The dog rolled over and looked up at her. "We need you," she repeated. He slowly morphed back to human form beneath her hand , still looking at her, his hand slowly reaching up to grasp hers. He moved his mouth to speak, but no words came, and his face fell. She hadn't understood that expression until now but it was as if the expression on his face had slid right off to shatter on the floor. He gestured to his throat with his free hand; she placed her free hand over his throat and concentrated. It was strange to use her powers in someone else's dream to heal an injury that had never really occurred. Beast Boy's voice box was damaged; he couldn't speak. She narrowed her eyes and concentrated, willing it to repair itself, and

woke up.

Raven sat up slowly, sending a disgruntled green cat sliding from her side to her lap. He mewed up at her and she rose one hand to him absently. Light was streaming through the window. It was early morning.

She turned her gaze back to Beast Boy, whose current form was staring at her with all the intensity a cat could have. "So," she said slowly, "you're afraid of losing your voice and becoming a pet. Is that why you talk so much?"

The cat did not reply.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko: **Sorry about the wait. Med Terms is not a fun class. Once again, I'm floored by the reviews. Thanks, everyone!

* * *

**April 21st, 2008- **Fixed some typos, added a few lines for clarity, and currently wishing very much that I was back in Med Terms. It was certainly easier than Clin Chem or Vet Sci IV, even if the latter classes are more fun.


	4. Takeena Osay Nowa

**Disclaimer:** I don't own it. I own an apartment that, sadly, closely resembles Beast Boy's room, complete with bunkbed despite having only one occupant who doesn't actually sleep in a bed, but I don't own BB or any of the other Titans.

Thanks goes to my beta, ShinobiCyrus.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you.  
-William Arthur Ward _

**4.**

**Takeena Osay Nowa ****  
**

Raven sat across from Robin and forced herself to keep from groaning out loud. It was over an hour into Robin's session and so far the Boy Wonder had spent the entire time railing against himself. Not that it was entirely a bad thing; if Robin was someone who needed to talk out his problems, and he most probably was, it could help for him to tell Raven everything he'd been blaming himself for over the past few days.

That didn't mean it was enjoyable.

"…And I should have _known _that Slade had Terra, I've been there, I was responsible for her and I failed her…"

Raven finally raised a hand to stop his flow of speech. The green cat nestled on her lap looked up drowsily, then went back to sleep. "Okay, Robin. You've been berating yourself for…" she checked the workroom clock, "an hour and twenty-seven minutes now. So, in order, Beast Boy is not your fault. None of us noticed what was happening, and Cyborg certainly sees more of him than you do. The fact that no one made dinner is not your fault. It was Cyborg's turn and he's currently moping in the garage with the T-car _because _he sees the most of Beast Boy and didn't notice. The fact that the Tower is a mess is not your fault. There are five teenagers living in here and only you and I are concerned with neatness. It doesn't ever stay clean long. It is not your fault that Beast Boy fought Slade alone. He chose to sneak out with Terra that night and we were all concerned with the Sladebots within the Tower. My lack of sleep is not your responsibility nor your concern. I told you I intended to Dreamwalk _and_ I told you what that meant. And nothing that occurred with Terra was your fault. She was a team member and a friend of _all_ of us and we _all_ should have noticed something was wrong. Because no one did does not reflect badly on you as a leader, it reflects well on her ability as an actress."

Robin stared at her blankly. Beast Boy ruined the moment by leaping onto the desk with a _mew_ and sending papers flying as he scrabbled his claws after a terrified fly. Raven sighed, reached out, snagged Beast Boy by the scruff and dragged him back to her lap. She hadn't really wanted to bring him, but she didn't think she'd be able to pry Robin out of his workroom and she hadn't been able to deal with the sound of a cat crying from behind her bedroom door. Knowing the cat was Beast Boy only made it worse. Robin dove for the papers and quickly sorted them back onto his desk.

"Robin," she said after a long pause. He didn't look at her, instead focusing on Beast Boy's half-disassembled communicator on the desk between them. He had been trying to figure out a way to make it read medical conditions, but had stopped when Cyborg pointed out that it was a bad idea and had he been thinking straight, he'd have _known_ it was a bad idea. "Did you know that when you're in Beast Boy's dreams, your mask is off?"

_Now_ he looked at her. "It is?"

She nodded. "Yep. And it made me think, I've _never_ seen you take off your mask, in all the time I've known you. None of us have."

He looked away, crossed his arms.

"Why is that? Of all of us, you're the only one who could possibly take off your costume and blend into a crowd. For the rest of us, the masks don't come off, period. No matter what, Starfire is still an alien, Cyborg is still half-metal, Beast Boy is still green, I'm still…well, me. We would all love the chance to blend into a crowd. So why don't you take the chance when you have it?"

"I feel more comfortable with the mask on," Robin replied after a longer silence than before, and she knew it wasn't the full truth. She sighed again.

"Robin. What else?"

"…It doesn't seem fair."

Raven shifted her gaze from Beast Boy, who was stretching and managing to prick her with his claws- by accident, she thought- back to the Boy Wonder. "Doesn't seem fair?"

"Because for the rest of you, the masks _don't_ come off. It doesn't seem fair that I can take mine off if I want to when the rest of you don't have that option."

She stared at him, and thought of something that seemed like a long time ago. She had always thought that it was something that Robin knew, or failing that, that he didn't _need_ to know. "Do you have any idea how knights feel when they swear themselves to a monarch, or samurai when they swear themselves to a lord?"

The blank eyes of his mask narrowed at her and his voice changed slightly, just enough to remind her that before he was her leader he was Batman's protégé. "Yes," he said in a voice like shadows and the dark. "I have some idea."

_Son of a Bat,_ she thought to herself, and it was a combination of her own private amusement at the thought and the fact that she'd had such a thought at all that made her realize just how badly she needed sleep. "When we all swore in as Titans. How do you think we felt then? You had Batman. It's been a long time since we had homes or families. You gave us both."

"Beast Boy had the Doom Patrol," Robin said, but it sounded like he was trying to convince himself.

She nodded and ran her hand across the thick, soft fur. "And you saw how they behaved around him. Mento always wanted him to give more than he had and was always disappointed no matter what Beast Boy did. Saying that the Doom Patrol prepared Beast Boy for the Titans is like saying Batman prepared you for the Titans- and you know that isn't true, no matter how much you might wish it to be so. The Titans is different- and besides you and Beast Boy, the rest of us did not have even that much."

Robin said nothing.

"You don't have quite the same issues of trust as you did at first," she said slowly, as much for her own benefit as his. "If you didn't trust Starfire the two of you would never have been able to perform even half of the aerial maneuvers you do. But you still forget- as much as you are here for us, we are here for you." The masked eyes looked away, and Raven could not stifle a yawn on the end of her words. Robin smiled.

"Go to bed, Rae. You need the sleep."

She stood up slowly, allowing time for the green cat to scramble to a perch on her shoulder, his tail draped around her neck for balance. She stood for a long moment looking at Robin and wondered if he really understood the love a team bore for their leader. She thought he should, because he was raised by Batman, or so he'd told her once; but she was not sure that he did. So she stopped in the doorway and without turning, said, "We would follow you anywhere, Robin. Anywhere at all." Then she phased through the Tower to her own room, flicking out a coil of dark energy to slide the door shut.

She came very close to flopping onto the bed. Almost as soon as she was settled the green cat leapt onto the bedcovers and proceeded to make a nest for himself on top of her. She shoved him off lightly and pointed towards a plate full of tofu sitting on the desk in the corner of her room. "Go. Eat."

He let out an indignant meow as he tumbled from the bed and immediately leapt back up, digging in his claws for purchase and making Raven hiss as they pricked her skin through the cloth. "All right, fine, _don't_ eat then. But I'm getting some sleep."

Beast Boy had his tail flicked over his eyes and his head resting on his paws and didn't appear to object to this. She curled up slightly on her side and felt his weight shift to account for it. Raven fell asleep quickly, still exhausted from the night before. She was too tired to perform any meditation that wasn't absolutely necessary without falling asleep, including the one she usually performed to guide her dreams.

She rather regretted not having done that meditation anyway when she found herself with her feet dangling over the edge of the onyx platform with the soulself seated beside her. On her opposite side, a green wolf lay stretched out with his head in her lap, tail thumping against the ground as it wagged slowly.

One of the problems with Dreamwalking was that you sometimes found yourself Walking when you had no intention of doing so.

Resigning herself to another night without sleep, Raven did as the soulself was doing and gazed into the emptiness below, listening to the voices.

"…as a pet…"

"she no longer wanted to remember…you…"

"Beast Boy…you were the best friend I ever had…"

Raven sighed and leaned back, idly scratching behind the wolf's ears. "So this wolf," she addressed the soulself, "he wouldn't be the Beast, would he?"

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the soulself nod. "That's the form he takes here."

"Pack mentality," Raven mused thoughtfully.

"…What?"

"Pack mentality," she repeated. "Pretty common on this team. You know, Robin's the alpha wolf, the rest of us are pack. You protect any member of the pack that's hurt, even if it's from the rest of the pack." That last part didn't entirely ring true with her, but she shied away from the other possibility that presented itself. She leaned forward again, resting her elbows in the wolf's thick ruff. "Why a cat?"

She could hear a slight smile in his voice. "You seemed like a cat person."

"You're not dreaming."

"I'm not asleep," he agreed, though that wasn't what she had said.

"I shouldn't be here," she said, and he did not reply at first. When he did, it was only to whisper softly,

"Neither should I."

She closed her eyes and noted that the song from before was still singing through his soul. An idea budded and she, too, began to sing, softly at first, then gradually louder. After a short while the sound of her voice began to drown out Terra's.

"Takeena ewanay, takeena osay nowa, banela rata nelay, takeena ewanay…" It was a song she had taught herself long ago and she knew nothing of it except the gentle tune and that the words were Gaelic, or at least derived of that language. The song had something of the wild and the night in it, which was probably why she had liked it. It had a soothing, restful melody, and her deep clear voice carried it out over the yawning gap below them. It did not quite cover Terra's voice, because she was an alto and the other girl had been a soprano, and the higher pitches carried better; but it worked well enough that the wolf nestled closer and she felt the soulself press close beside her.

She kept singing for a long, long time.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko: **The song Raven is singing is _my_ mantra, for anyone who's interested- and sadly, I know about as much about it as Raven does. Thanks to all my reviewers. My mail has good spam filters, so it's about all the mail I get.

* * *

**April 21st, 2008-** Edited for typos, some sentences added/edited.


	5. Perned in the Gyre

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the Titans, although Beast Boy would be proud of the veggie burgers I have in my freezer- they're not too bad once you get past the fact that you have _no idea_ what you're eating. To me, 'mushrooms and vegetables' does _not_ qualify as a list of ingredients.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.  
Muriel Strode _

**5.**

**Perned in the Gyre **

She had no way to keep track of time in here. Eventually, she flopped onto her back on the smooth dark surface, smiling slightly when she felt the soulself flop back with her. She stared up at the encompassing darkness- and started when she saw stars twinkling in it.

"Okay, those weren't there before."

"You don't honestly expect that messing in my mind won't have some effect on it."

"I guess not, or I wouldn't be here. Although…" She rolled away slightly, bumping into the wolf that had stretched himself along her other side. "I really shouldn't be here now. Not only was this completely unintentional, but I'm not gonna be happy with the lack of sleep tomorrow." Raven watched as the constellation Draco wheeled into existence. "Which reminds me. Why are you having nightmares about losing your voice?"

The soulself sat up again, apparently no more able to sit still than Beast Boy's physical self. The wolf pricked his ears but otherwise stayed where he was. Beast Boy's voice was soft. "Because if I can't talk…there isn't anything to separate me from an animal."

"Your normal form is human," she said, without really thinking about it, and when he turned to stare at her she was suddenly acutely aware of his fang, his pointed ears, his green skin and hair. They were accented by the way his fang caught on his upper lip and trembled slightly and the droop to his ears. She passed a hand across her face and let it drop to the wolf's fur. "Beast Boy, your _mind_ is human. That's what really matters."

He looked across her at the wolf and said nothing. "Okay, so maybe not completely human. But I'm half-demon, Cyborg is half-metal, Starfire is an alien, and- why am I having this conversation twice? I already _had _this conversation with Robin."

"_Robin_ has issues with not being human enough? _Our_ Robin?"

"No, _our _Robin has issues with being too human." She glanced down. "So, are you aware that this…platform thing is growing grass?" She reached down and pulled up a handful of it. A clump of dirt came with.

_I wonder…?_

Raven narrowed her eyes and concentrated. Just as she had hoped, a raven materialized in the air above her. "I _can_ mess around in here."

"Um, hello? _My _mind?"

Raven smirked and let a ball of dark fire form above her upraised palm. "And my idea."

After some trial and error, they both figured out how to cause physical representations of memories to appear. Raven conjured up some wood and they lit a blazing bonfire in the center of the dark expanse.

"All right," she said finally, when she stood across the fire from him with the wolf still at her side. "Pick something that's bothering you, and toss it in."

When he just stared at her, looking completely lost, she sighed and plucked a worn journal from the air. "Like this," she said, and threw it in the flames. It caught fire and the pages flapped open, fluttering wildly as the smoke blackened and curled the edges. Evidently Beast Boy had caught on, because a bulky metal collar and glowing red leash soon joined the journal in the fire.

They took turns after that, each one summoning a representation of some past hurt- a white cloak, a paper rose, a mask- and throwing it into the flames and watching as it threw off sparks. Eventually they had come to what they each knew would be the last thing into the fire. By now, the stars were set against deepest blue instead of black, the grass was green and long, and a faint breeze tangled the hem of Raven's cloak.

Raven held a book bound with white leather. Beast Boy held a heart-shaped box.

"Is that…is that Malchior's book?" he asked, hesitant.

"Is that Terra's box?" she replied evenly.

Neither one of them answered, and after the silence stretched on for a bit, both let the chosen items tumble from their grasp. They lit at the exact same instant and vanished in a puff of purple smoke, vivid in the predawn light that now suffused the platform.

"You know," Beast Boy said finally, "if you're going to keep coming here, we should name this place."

"Mine is Nevermore."

"Um, what?"

"Nevermore. My mindscape is called Nevermore. After Poe's poem."

Beast Boy sat down on his side of the fire and leaned back. Raven went around it to sit next to him. "Don't suppose you have any ideas for a name for mine? Poetry is really more your thing."

"'For certain minutes at the least, that crafty demon and that loud beast, that plague me day and night ran out of my sight; though I had long perned in the gyre, between my hatred and desire. I saw my freedom won and all laugh in the sun'," she quoted in answer. At the look on his face she added, "Yeats. Demon and Beast." She felt a vague uneasiness telling him the title, but brushed it off. "The Gyre might work as a name."

"What's a …gyre?" he asked, tasting the unfamiliar name.

"It means a circular or spiral form- like this platform."

"All right," he agreed. "So you have Nevermore, and I have the Gyre. Does Robin get the Birdcave?"

"Sure. Why not."

The comfortable silence returned for a while. It lasted right up until she realized that besides the wolf still insisting on warming her side with his fur, the soulself had nestled closer until he had somehow managed to half bury himself in her cloak against her other side. She roused herself- was it possible to fall asleep when she was already asleep?- and started to nudge him gently away, but he clung tighter and squeezed his eyes shut.

_Damn. Just when he was starting to act normal._

"Beast Boy," she said gently. He burrowed further. "Beast Boy." He shivered, and she wasn't quite sure what to do. "Garfield. You know any of the team is there for you when you ask."

He looked at her, and she saw the leaf-shadows in his eyes that she now knew came with thoughts of the word _pet._ Of course; he had wanted attention that day, none of them had given him any, and that was what had led to him wandering Jump City in the guise of a green dog to begin with.

"We're the Titans. We learn our lessons. We're all here for each other, understand?" The edge of her cloak where his face was once again buried was damp and smelled of salt. She tried not to think of the implications.

Beast Boy made an odd trill that she associated more with his cat form and she put her arm around him, for lack of a better idea. She didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say, but that seemed to be all right with him.

"Cyborg can have the Garage," she said suddenly. She didn't know what had made her say it until she heard him laugh. She turned to smile at him slightly, but started instead.

"Please," Starfire said hesitantly, "have I performed the meditating wrong?"

Raven shot to her feet, dislodging the soulself and the wolf. One stood in turn, tail drooping slightly as he glanced up at her, and the other tumbled to the side. Unconsciously, she stepped in front of him. "Star. _How _did you get in here?"

Starfire shrugged, looking around with interest at the grassy platform and the still-blazing fire. "You have not yet awakened, even though it is nearing the time for the having of the dinner, and Friend Robin is alarmed. He asked if you had taught me any meditation that might help me to learn what had become of you."

"I haven't," Raven said slowly. "I never taught you anything but basic meditation." The kind of thing anyone with enough books, time, and patience could learn- _not_ Dreamwalking. Dreamwalking was difficult. Dreamwalking was dangerous. Even if she had _known_ how to teach Starfire she wouldn't have _done _so.

So how was Starfire here?

"Um, hey?" The soulself had rolled into a kneeling position and glared up at them both, ears back. "My mind? Anyone remember that little detail? It's getting kind of crowded in here."

"Beast Boy!" Starfire exclaimed with all her usual jubilance. "You are all right!" She launched herself at Beast Boy, who ducked back behind Raven with a frightened squeak. The wolf backed away as well. Starfire halted, hovering.

"He's not quite all right yet, Starfire." Raven gestured for the other girl to sit, and after a moment the four had settled themselves comfortably beside the fire. "And Beast Boy- you have been in my mind as well."

"Cyborg was there, too," the shifter said defensively. His defensiveness was somewhat diminished by the way he had managed to seat himself almost directly behind Raven, hidden from Starfire.

"And you and I have done the switching of the bodies," Star added.

Raven blinked as it clicked. "And I have also been in Robin's mind. We must all still be connected. Starfire, how, _exactly_, did you get here?"

"When I was performing the meditation exercise and was in the place you described as 'immersed in one's own mind,' I saw that there were strange lights that were not so bright before. I walked into the brightest of them, and found myself here."

"'Not so bright before.' So they were there before?"

Starfire nodded. "They have been in my- dreamscape, I believe it is- since first I visited there. There is a light for each of my friends," Raven had the sudden uncomfortable and near certain feeling that Starfire's dreamscape must be white with the colors bright against it, "purple for you, green for Beast Boy, and so on. The green and purple were swirling into each other. I had never seen them do that, and so I walked toward and through them."

"And came here, because our minds are linked at the moment." A thought occurred to her. Oh, and because Beast Boy will likely want to know, what do you usually refer to your dreamscape by? I told you mine was Nevermore. As of now, his is the Gyre, and the general consensus is that Robin's would be the Birdcave and Cyborg's the Garage."

"Mine is the Tulgey Wood," Starfire said eagerly, "after a delightful poem I believe to be about the hero of Jkatha's sixth moon."

Raven decided it would be kinder not to enlighten her and continued with her original train of thought. "So, you at least can Walk into my dreams, and by extension Beast Boy's. Since the links go pretty much all the way around the group, it's probably safe to assume any of us can do the same."

"Raven," Starfire said hesitantly, "forgive me for interrupting, but I hear- voices."

Of course. Raven had manifest emotions, Starfire had lights, and Beast Boy had voices. She wondered irrelevantly if Cyborg had different computers. "Yes, Star. You would hear voices here."

"I hear _your_ voice. Singing."

Surprised, Raven listened closer to the tumult. Sure enough, her voice continued to sing. It didn't quite drown out Terra's higher voice- but it did drown Slade. "I may have underestimated the amount of influence I have here."

"Perhaps I, too, could add something," Starfire suggested.

"Knock yourself out. Just, try not to create any more trauma with any Tamaranean singing, please."

"I was thinking of something quite different." Raven watched as Starfire held out her hands and let green light wash over them. She knelt at a spot on the grassy platform and touched her fingers to the ground. When she moved away, a children's slide sprang into being.

Raven fought back a smile. "You're…building a children's playground in his mind. Somehow, that's actually quite fitting."

Beast Boy crept out from behind her and looked around. He grinned suddenly and clapped his hands and Raven repressed an actual laugh as a metal carousel jumped into place before her. It was one of the round metal platforms with colored bars that one person ran around to spin the others on. Starfire _did _laugh and immediately jumped on. "Come, friends! Let us ride on the delightful metal wheel!"

Beast Boy followed her and grabbed a bar in the green-metal area. The wolf leapt on and settled next to him. Looking closely, Raven noticed that there were five colored metal areas- purple, orange, green, blue and red. Orange and green were already occupied. Raven shrugged mentally and levitated herself to the purple area, then sent the carousel spinning with a flicker of dark energy. Wind rushed past as they began spinning much faster than would have been possible if someone had been pushing.

Raven had to revise that thought when Starfire vaulted off with a laugh, grabbed a bar and began to run. Much faster than an average person could have pushed it- Starfire got them going pretty fast before pulling herself back on. Raven braced her back against the center pole, feeling Beast Boy press back from the opposite side, and hooked her arms around the bars to stay in place. She wasn't sure how Starfire was staying on without actually holding onto anything.

The sky blurred around them as they spun. When they finally halted, it had shifted from predawn to true dawn, pale colors streaking the sky. Raven found she didn't particularly want to move. "Starfire. How long have I been asleep, again?"

"All day, friend Raven. As I have told you previously, Robin is alarmed."

"Well," Raven said thoughtfully, "tonight's your session, and this certainly seems to have helped Beast Boy. How about we just have your therapy in here?" She glanced back over her shoulder. The soulself and wolf had both curled up close to the center; fur brushed her cape. "So. Spill. Robin just talked himself out; you've seen what's been going on with Beast Boy; it's your turn."

"I do not understand Robin," were the first words out of Starfire's mouth. Raven began cursing mentally and did not plan on stopping any time soon. Romance was _not_ her department. "He gives all the signals that, were we on Tamaran, would indicate that he wants to initiate a formal courtship. But we are not on Tamaran, and whenever he seems about to do the asking to the movies or the exchanging of dead plants, he becomes red and does not then do so," Starfire ran out of breath, to Raven's fervent thanks.

"Starfire," Raven interrupted desperately before her friend drew breath to continue, "Robin is shy. Why don't _you _ask _him_ on a date?"

Starfire gasped as if she had suggested something horrible. "It is not done so!"

"No, Star, drinking mustard is 'not done so.' Asking Robin to go out with you is perfectly acceptable. Pick a night you can leave Cyborg and I in charge of the Tower and go. After the last talk I had with him, I can assure you that Robin needs a night of relaxation. Now, is there anything _else_ you want to talk about?"

"Yes," Starfire said promptly, "but I am not so sure it is wise to speak of her here."

Raven began to wonder despairingly if there was any Titan Terra _hadn't_ left with psychological damage. Probably not. "You're probably right."

She was about to say something else, but Starfire interrupted her. "I must go. Robin is calling me."

"Bring him into my room and tell him to call me, too. That should bring me out of here." She really had to find another way of exiting.

Starfire nodded and vanished. Raven turned and stroked the wolf's soft fur. He cracked one eye open to gaze up at her. The soulself was curled up and using the wolf as a pillow. She looked around at the dawn, the grass, the dying fire, and the playground structures, and smiled to herself. It was definitely a good change from the onyx platform. She hadn't taught Starfire to Dreamwalk- but she should have. Maybe she would.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** I need to find a children's playground here. Preferably one with one of the "delightful metal wheels." I love old wood-and-metal playgrounds. Sorry about the wait; I have midterms next week. I've been desperately studying medical terminology and will likely spend the weekend locked in my apartment doing the same until my cat claws me so I'll pay attention to her. She's a little hellion. And if anyone does not recognize the metal carousel- I'm not sure how else to describe it, but they're just about the most fun bit of equipment a playground can have. I still play on them with my brothers and we're all legal adults. Heh.

Saiyoko


	6. One Step Forward

**Disclaimer:** I don't own them. I have a friend who is a lot like Robin, but with a wicked sense of humor. That is as close as I get to owning any of these characters. **  
**

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_My father always used to say that, when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life.  
-Lee Iacocca_

**6.**

**One Step Forward, Two Steps Back **

Raven was up fairly early the next day. Even though she'd spent the entire day before asleep, she'd been Dreamwalking, so she _should _have been exhausted. Strangely, she wasn't.

She was up early enough, in fact, that the only other Titan awake was Robin. He was already outside on the training course, so she took the opportunity to go to the roof to meditate. She supposed it would have been easier to stay in her room, but after so much time in Beast Boy's mind she felt she could use the fresh air.

Originally she was going to leave the shapeshifter-turned-cat in her room while she meditated, but he slipped out the door behind her as she went to close it, startling her because she had thought he was still asleep. When she tried to pick him up and put him back in her room, he made an angry swipe at her with his claws outstretched, forcing her to drop him. So she found herself trailed by a green cat that was twining around her ankles, meowing loudly, and in general ensuring walking would be difficult. She tried floating instead, but when she did that the cat kept leaping at her cloak and trying to wrestle with the hem.

By the time she made it to the roof, she was thoroughly annoyed. To make matters worse, Beast Boy kept creeping to the edge of the roof and stretching one paw out as far as possible. Raven had to keep puling him back. She was reasonably certain that if he fell now, he wasn't about to change into a bird and fly away unharmed. She was at a loss as to how to keep him from the edge of the roof. Before visiting the Gyre, she would have simply conjured up an energy leash to ensure he stayed nearby, but there was no way she could do that to him now.

The problem was solved for when Beast Boy quickly became bored of his new game and slunk over to her. She sighed in relief and closed her eyes to meditate when she felt claws prick her back lightly, shortly before a weight managed to settle on her shoulders. She cracked hr eyes open when she felt whiskers tickling her face and found herself staring straight at Beast Boy's nose. She went cross-eyed looking back at him; as he tried to twine around her neck further to touch his nose to hers, he slipped. She felt claws tear her skin briefly, eliciting a startled yelp, before the cat landed in her lap. Beast Boy looked up at her, looking as startled as a cat can manage, then lashed his tail and curled up on his side. One paw remained hooked on her leotard where her cloak had fluttered open, just above her-

Wait.

"Oh, you are so lucky you are a cat right now," Raven murmured, removing the offending paw. Beast Boy meowed sleepily and curled up again, this time placing his paw on her bare leg. She sighed and started petting him. It probably wasn't a good _idea_ to pet him, she reflected, seeing as it was his worries about becoming a pet that had _caused_ this situation., but it seemed to calm him down and it definitely calmed her down. She settled in to meditate again.

Robin found her some time later, still on the roof, sound asleep with a green cat purring contentedly in her arms. He started to put a hand on her shoulder to wake her- Cyborg and Starfire were up now, and Raven probably wanted to brew her tea _before_ those two began cooking- but before his hand made contact, the Titan alert went off, yanking Raven from her slumber abruptly. She shot to her feet, dislodging Beast Boy, who yowled and clung to her with all his claws out. She gasped in pain and tried to shake him off, but he clung harder, fur sticking out wildly in all directions. Finally one good shake sent him flying, only to land, claws outstretched, on Robin where he'd fallen to the roof when Raven bolted upright. There was a very, very high-pitched yelp from the Titan leader as claws scored their way through his uniform. When he looked up at Raven, she seemed more amused than apologetic.

"I thought your uniform was stronger than steel?"

"Evidently, so are Beast Boy's claws," Robin groaned, sitting up slowly as the cat leapt off him and slunk next to Raven. Cyborg burst out the door to the roof, letting it slam against the wall.

"It's Mumbo," Cyborg said grimly. "He's, uh…actually, I'm not sure how to put this."

"He is building a carnival," Starfire said, bemused, drifting out the door behind Cyborg. This, understandably, earned her a number of confused stares.

"Why can't we at least have _sane_ villains," Raven muttered, stepping towards the edge of the roof. She paused when a green cat sprang to her shoulder and crouched there, tail switching back and forth and claws extended slightly. She turned her face towards him. His ears were pinned forward as well, but they went flat against his head when she spoke. "No. Absolutely not. You are staying here."

Beast Boy growled and extended his claws a little further, digging into her skin slightly. She was attempting to stare him down when Cyborg's hand came down on her free shoulder (this met with considerably less disastrous results than when Robin had attempted it).

"Yo, Rae," Cyborg said quietly, but forcefully, "we don't have time for this. If he's gonna come, he's gonna come."

She glanced up at Cyborg and sighed. "You're right. We don't have the time. But…" She glanced back to the cat, who looked pleased with himself and had begun washing his tail. "He's just a cat. He's going to get hurt." _Or killed_, a little part of her mind added helpfully. She told that particular part of her mind to go jump in a lake. Beast Boy would _not_ be killed. He was a Teen Titan. They did not _allow_ each other to get killed.

"We won't let'em," Cyborg said confidently, confirming her thoughts. "He'll stick close to you, so you stick close to me, and Mumbo won't know what hit'em. Awright?" He grinned down at her and held out her other hand. Raven sighed and smiled slightly. She placed her hand in his.

"All right."

Beast Boy meowed in triumph.

"I'm holding this against you," she informed the green cat dryly as she took to the air, slinging a dark energy disc under Cyborg as Starfire lifted Robin. The cat merely set about washing his tail.

Mumbo was evidently getting denser, because he was only as far away as the park near the Tower. The park had, luckily, cleared of people; luckily, but surprisingly, because really it was more entertaining than frightening to watch Mumbo conjure up Ferris wheels and roller coasters.

Raven landed lightly behind him as he giggled to himself, waving a rubber wand and watching a bright façade spring up in front of him. It had _Mumbo's Jumble of Fun House_ emblazoned on it and she groaned to herself.

Cyborg, true to his word, landed beside her. The sound of his impact made Mumbo turn around and gasp.

"So the Titans have arrived!" Mumbo announced, almost gleefully. He either didn't notice or didn't care that Cyborg was powering up his Sonic Cannon, or that Starfire was readying to hurl both Robin and quite a few starbolts at him from behind. His focus leapt immediately to Raven and the hissing cat on her shoulder. "And my favorite assistant magician has gotten herself a familiar! You know, dear, playing up the 'witch' persona can alienate the crowds." He smiled and snapped is fingers, causing…_something_ to materialize. Raven didn't get a good look at it before he hurled it at her. "And besides…Jump City has a leash law."

"_No!_" The snarl ripped out of Cyborg's throat as his arm cut in front of her, the metal collar striking him with a _clang _and bouncing off to clatter against his feet. "You will _not_ be messin' wi' them!"

Startled, Raven still hadn't moved when Cyborg launched into a barrage of attacks against Mumbo, swinging his arms at him rather than using his sonic cannon. The magician held up his hands in front of him, palms out, and stuttered as he backed away. "Now, now, Titans, I'm just trying to uphold the law and have a good- ulp!" He gulped when a starbolt blasted away the ground directly in front of him. Robin's bo staff caught him in the side and he stumbled. Raven, free of her temporary paralysis, launched a flurry of dark energy attacks at him.

Then, to her horror, the green cat launched off her shoulder with a snarl and latched onto Mumbo, clawing at him. Mumbo flailed wildly, trying to get the green hellion off him, and Raven darted forward to pry him off. As she reached him, Mumbo succeeded in prying Beast Boy off and threw him into Raven…knocking her backwards into the Fun House, cat clasped in her arms.

"No!" Cyborg dove at the entrance just as a portcullis started to slam shut, making it most of the way under before it slammed down on his right foot, knocking the mechanical appendage off. He lurched upright inside the Fun House and staggered into the dark entryway. A second door, one of solid metal, slammed down behind him.

Mumbo narrowed his eyes at Robin and Starfire, who were staring at the closed doors, horrified. "Looks like your friends are off to play, kiddies, and it's just us now."

Raven groaned and sat up slowly. Wherever she had landed, it was pitch black. Her eyes widened in alarm as she realized she was no longer holding a certain furry Titan. "Beast Boy!" she hissed into the dark. "Beast Boy, where are you?"

A light suddenly flared before her, forcing her to throw up an arm to shield her eyes. When she brought it back down, she saw Cyborg grinning at her sheepishly, leaning against the wall. "Yo, Rae. Where's the little green guy?" When he saw Raven's expression, his grin faded. "He's all right, isn't he? ...Isn't he?"

Raven stood and swept her gaze across the dark corridor. It took a moment of searching, but she found Beast Boy between her and the wall. The reason he'd fallen from her grasp was that he had reverted to human form inside the fun house. _Well, as close to human as he can get,_ she amended silently, thinking of the conversation they'd had in the Gyre. She knelt beside him and laid a hand on his side, preparing to heal him if necessary. "Beast Boy?"

Cyborg half-knelt, half-fell on the shifter's other side. "He's not a cat? So, is he okay now?"

Beast Boy chose that moment to lurch to a crouch and look around wildly. His ears were flat against his head and his eyes had a wild look to him. Actually, Raven realized as she looked closer, his eyes were slit like a cat's eyes. His hands scrabbled on the stone floor as he backed against the wall.

"…I'm gonna take that as a no."

"Cyborg, can you shine the light on him?" Something was glinting at Beast Boy's throat. When the light turned to him, he hissed and tried to back up further, but there was nowhere left to go. Raven finally got a good look at him and felt her blood start to boil.

Mumbo's first collar had missed, but a second one was clamped around Beast Boy's neck. This one was of black metal, and the glint that she'd seen was a silver tag in the form of a raven. Her fists clenched.

"Damn! When'd he pull that off?" Cyborg, frustrated, reached for the collar. Beast Boy leapt away, landing almost on top of Raven. Overbalanced, Cyborg fell flat on his face. Raven sighed.

"Cyborg, did you know you're missing a foot?"

He glanced down. "Huh."

Raven returned her attention to Beast Boy, who by now was practically crawling on top of her. "Beast Boy. It's me, Raven. Can you hear me? Beast Boy?"

Beast Boy stopped moving, clinging tightly to her side, his eyes squeezed shut. She shook him slightly and his eyes cracked open again- and for the first time in a long time, they were completely normal. Well, for Beast Boy.

"Raven?" Beast Boy's voice was hoarse. "Wha- what's going on?"

Raven blinked. "Don't tell me Mumbo actually managed to _fix_ something," she muttered.

"Hey, BB, you okay?" Cyborg asked, placing one hand against Beast Boy's side. The changeling jumped, startled, and turned to face Cyborg.

"Whoa, Cy, don't sneak up on me like that!"

Cyborg drew back uncertainly and addressed Raven. "Yo, Rae, now what's wrong with him? He's usually talkin' up a storm by now, and he hasn't said a word!"

Raven drew her hood down and studied first Cyborg's face, then Beast Boy's.

"Raven? Why is Cy starin' at me like that? Why hasn't he said anything?"

"Beast Boy," Raven said calmly. "Tell me if you can hear this." She turned around and punched the wall, hard. Little bits of plaster flaked down from the ceiling. Cyborg slammed his hands over his ears.

Beast Boy shook his head.

"So I can hear you, you can hear me, and no one else can hear you." Raven sighed and put her head in her hands. This day just kept getting better and better. "Cyborg, can you walk?"

"No, and my spare parts are at the Tower. Can you use your powers?"

Raven closed her eyes. "Azarath Metrion Zin- ow!" She glared at the previously unnoticed black metal bracelet on her wrist. It had zapped her. "Apparently not. I hate to do this, but…Beast Boy, do you think you can change?"

The shifter nodded and started to morph…right back into a cat. He let out a startled mew and popped back to human form. "That was supposed to be a gorilla," he said, shaken.

"Sonic cannon?"

Cyborg shook his head. "Blew the charge goin' after Mumbo. Man, that dude needs a hobby."

"I'm starting to think we _are _ his hobby," Raven said dryly. She turned to Beast Boy. "Let me get that off," she said, gesturing to the collar. Hesitantly, Beast Boy tilted his head back so she could reach the clasp. As soon as she unfastened the collar, however, he morphed back into a cat. Raven sighed. "One step forward, two steps back."

"Why don't ya just put the collar back on, if it makes him human again?" Cyborg asked curiously.

"Because I've seen his nightmares," Raven said darkly, "and he's better off as a cat than collared."

Cyborg held up his hands. "All right, all right, you're his healer and you know best." He grew serious again. "What're we gonna do now?"

Raven leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, feeling the green cat settle in her lap once again. "Starfire and Robin can handle Mumbo, and they saw us get knocked in here. You can't walk, I can't phase, Beast Boy can't morph."

"So…."

"We wait."

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Midterms over. Med terms not being miserably failed. That is a major relief. Most of this chapter can be blamed on my cat, Onyx. Well, her and the fact that I ran out of actual food a day or two ago. Mumbo's crazy carnival? I was tired of bank robberies. Expect to hear more about the carnival.

Saiyoko


	7. Where We're Headed

**Disclaimer:** I don't own the Titans or anything related, or I'd be living in a giant T. Well, except having superpowers would likely tempt me into theft at least once.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_If we don't change our direction we're likely to end up where we're headed.  
-Chinese proverb_

**7.**

**Where We're Headed **

They waited.

And waited.

And then they waited some more.

Raven continued to lean back against the wall, Beast Boy curled up in her lap.

"Man, what is takin' them so long?" Cyborg groaned, shifting his weight uncomfortably. There simply was no way for him to get comfortable with only one foot, so he had taken up a position across the hallway from Raven and Beast Boy with his back against the wall, legs stretched out on front of him.

Raven shifted slightly as well, placing one hand on the cat. "They're probably still fighting Mumbo. I don't think it's been that long."

"They're either fighting him or riding one of his Ferris wheels together ," Cyborg muttered.

Raven pried Beast Boy's claws off her cloak clasp. "_Stop_ that."

"See?" Cyborg declared. "Even the grass stain's getting' bored!"

"One, since when has that been unusual? Two, he's been attacking my cloak and various other possessions since he became a cat. It isn't because he's bored. It's because he's a cat," she snapped. Cyborg looked away.

"Yeah…About that. Do you know why he can't change back yet? I mean, there hasn't been a lot of stress, right?"

Raven's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Robin didn't tell you?"

"I know you've kinda been holed up recently, Rae, but other than his therapy session and when I got him to stop modifying the communicators, Robin really hasn't been talking to anyone but Starfire." Cyborg shrugged. "And besides…Robin won't tell me anything because he knows I feel responsible for the little guy." He reached one hand towards the little cat, but Beast Boy scrambled up Raven in alarm and crouched on her shoulder. Cyborg drew back as Raven reached up and scratched gently behind Beast Boy's ears.

"I'm not going to say it isn't your fault," Raven said slowly. Cyborg's face fell. "But it isn't just your fault. It's all of our faults." She lowered her head. "We all live with him. At least one of us should have noticed that he wasn't eating as much or talking as much."

Cyborg stretched out a hand towards Beast Boy again, but paused when its shadow engulfed the cat. "Man," Cyborg said quietly, "I never realized just how little the little guy is." Raven nodded. "So what is it Robin isn't telling me?"

Raven caught the changeling as he slipped from her shoulder, settling him in her lap once again. "It was suggested that he would make a better pet than a Titan. Slade told him when they fought that Terra had only wanted to keep him as a pet and that was the reason she had taken him from the Tower."

Cyborg's human eye widened. "Oh, man…and then when Terra kept saying she didn't know who she was…he must have thought that meant it was true."

Raven hadn't even thought of that yet. Cyborg was right; Terra's amnesia, real or not, would have merely confirmed to Beast Boy that he wasn't worth remembering. When people's pets died, they were missed; Terra didn't miss him. That...did not bode well.

"Cyborg, can you keep an eye out for Starfire and Robin? I'm going to get inside his head again." Raven shook her head slightly. "I never thought I'd say that."

"I thought your powers didn't work."

"This isn't related to my powers. Anything with enough self-control and determination could do this if they really, really wanted to."

"I'll keep watch," Cyborg replied. "Just…just heal B, all right? Tell him we want him back." He tried to smile, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. Eye.

Raven closed her eyes and focused, digging deep inside herself to the place she thought of as her center, a kind of energy core that contained her _self._ It wasn't nearly as easy jumping to Beast Boy's mind as it had been before. This time she had to clear out some of her own thoughts and emotions before she could begin to touch on his.

_What the hell are we doing we're just _kids_ dammitall we're just kids, we shouldn't have to deal with this, we're only superheroes _after _we're a band of orphans trying desperately to fit in and oh Azar they're the only family I _have_ please don't let anything happen to them-_

She landed, gasping, on her hands and knees in Beast Boy's dreamscape and the soulself rose to _his _knees from his place on the carousel to gape at her. She stumbled to her feet and then over to him and half fell, half sat down next to him, not bothering to seek her own color but joining him on the green metal. He seemed much calmer than before and she felt a flash of relief.

Then he curled closer to her and rubbed against her side like a cat, before curling up on his side with his head in her lap. Her stomach lurched as she brought one hand up to rest on his back. "Beast Boy, stop it!"

He twisted onto his back and looked up at her reproachfully. Her hand was on his chest now and she felt his heartbeat pulsing beneath it.

It wasn't a human's heartbeat.

"Stop what?"

Raven waved her free hand around vaguely. "Stop this. Stop _doing _this to yourself."

"Why?" Beast Boy didn't move, didn't shift his head from her lap or sit up, but all the same she got the impression that he was looming over her. "Why should I? I'm happy. Stop trying to fix it. Just…just let me be your cat." He closed his eyes and stilled, his ears drooping back. "At least even I can't screw that up."

"You're not happy," Raven said sharply. "Empath, remember? I _know _you're not happy."

His eyes shot back open and they were cat-slit again. "Why does it _matter?_" he hissed at her. "I can't change back! I've tried, all right? I've tried and tried and…" He paused; his breath was starting to catch in his throat. "A-a-and I c-can't. I can't change, Rae."

She let the nickname slide. "That's what I'm here to help you with."

"You don't understand!" Beast Boy cried out. He twisted again, closer to her this time, and dug his hands deep into her cloak. "I'm spending too much time as a cat. Its instincts…my instincts…my _thoughts_…they're all getting mixed up." He reached up and grasped her wrist. "You don't _understand._ There isn't _time_ for you to fix things. I'm so messed up, by the time you get me straightened out, I won't be _me_. I'll just…I'll just be a cat. A green cat, but otherwise just a cat."

Raven stared at him.

He tried to smile. It didn't reach his eyes. "Just promise you'll take care of me, all right, Rae? Don't let me end up in a shelter, or as a stray, or something."

Raven cleared her throat and started to speak, but the words caught in her throat. She tried again. "We'll figure something out. It's your own body working against you. We _will_ work something out." Her gaze caught his, held it. "I promise."

He opened his mouth to respond, but Cyborg's voice called her out of the dreamscape and back to her own body.

She opened her eyes and glared at him. He spoke before she could rebuke him. "Starfire and Robin haven't shown yet, and my sensors say it's been almost an hour. I think we're gonna have to start moving."

She agreed. It took them a few times to figure out _how _to get moving. In the end, Raven pulled her hood back and Beast Boy curled up inside it while Cyborg leaned on her, trying not to let her carry too much of his weight. They made very slow progress down the dark hallway.

After a while Cyborg initiated a game. The object was to state one thing that no one knew about you. Raven wasn't terribly enthusiastic.

"C'mon, Rae. I'll go first. Um, I like trance music."

Raven didn't say anything for a long time. Cyborg had just about given up when she said suddenly, "I like black coffee."

"There, now y'got it! …I've tried tofu."

"So have I, as well as soy milk."

"…It tasted…pretty bad."

"Yes," she agreed. "It did."

His voice shifted to a lower register. "When I was in the Hive, Gizmo was a friend."

"I used to catch butterflies when I was little, until someone told me that if you catch them you mess up their wings and they die. I never caught one again."

"My childhood hero was Sonic the Hedgehog."

"I never had a childhood hero."

"When I first got the cybernetics, all I could think at first was 'shit, I've been roboticized!'"

That got a not-quite-laugh from her. She wouldn't have had any idea what he was talking about except that Beast Boy insisted on watching Sonic cartoons every Saturday. She grew very quiet before admitting, "I miss Beast Boy."

The cat placed his paws on her shoulder and she placed one hand against the green ear.

"I miss arguing over meals with him." Cyborg's voice was quiet as well.

"I miss his jokes."

"…Never thought I'd hear you say that."

"Thought this was supposed to be things no one knew."

"…Yeah. I miss kicking his butt in Timesplitters 2."

"I've played that on single player when everyone else was asleep."

"You? Videogames?"

"Some of them are mindlessly repetitive enough to be relaxing."

"Excuses, excuses. Sometimes what I want most is to go to a home that never existed, that I never really had except in my mind."

"Me, too. Probably the others as well. That's probably why we're all living in a Tower on an island together." The next statement was her turn to lower her voice. "When it looked like Terra was about to kill Beast Boy, when I said it would be the last thing she ever did…I meant it. If she'd killed him I'd have killed her."

"I'd have helped," Cyborg replied grimly. "Titan or no, BB's been family for a long time now. It would have been wrong, and it would have been illegal, and it would have done more harm than good in the long run, and I'd have done it anyway. He's family, and nobody hurts my family."

"Nobody hurts my friends." Not the first time she'd said those words. Not the last.

The conversation died as they continued down the impossibly long hallway.

"You know," Cyborg said finally, "as soon as Star and Rob work everything out, the three of us are gonna be finding ourselves on a lot of missions together."

Raven just nodded.

"Bet he starts inventing missions after a while, just to clear out the Tower for the two of them."

"Wouldn't put it past him." Raven stopped suddenly. Cyborg lurched forward and caught himself on the wall.

"Yo, Rae, what's up?"

"I...I have an idea." She shifted away, leaving him to balance precariously against the wall. Raven knelt on the ground and gently set Beast Boy down in front of her. She locked gazes with him for a long moment and said something Cyborg couldn't hear. Then she produced the collar from within the folds of her cloak and slipped it around his neck.

It seamed itself shut within seconds, no flaw or catch visible in the black metal. Beast Boy resolved into his human form, looking more frightened than angry, and immediately began fidgeting with the silver raven hanging at the hollow of his neck. Raven spoke again and this time Cyborg could make out her words.

"I won't let you become a pet. You're a Titan. We're a team." And then, after a slight hesitation, "We're a family. And you're my friend."

**GuardianSaiyoko: **Just so you know, folks, I really appreciate reviews. They make me much more eager to write. This story has over four thousand hits- it only takes a few minutes to leave a review. Even if you _disliked_ it, let me know _why_.

Also, I have a Teen Titans oneshot up, called Ouroboros. I especially ask that if you read Ouroboros you leave a review because it's a very emotional story to me, with strong attachments to things I've experienced. It does have mild RobStar and BBRae, but in a slightly different way than usual. Again,** please review.** A full inbox means a much happier writer.

Saiyoko


	8. Majority Rules

**Disclaimer:** The quizzes say I'm Beast Boy, which baffles me since I like reading and meditation. However, regardless of the quizzes, I don't own the Titans or anything affiliated with them. I also don't own Zoobooks or the weird monkey show.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.  
-?_

**8.**

**Majority Rules **

"Whoa, hold up."

Raven glanced up at Cyborg.

"I thought you just said that putting a collar on him was a bad idea?"

Raven looped Beast Boy's arm around her shoulder and stood, bringing him up with her. He seemed to be in a state of dulled shock. "It is." She checked that Beast Boy was still too dazed to be listening. He was. "However, I just found out that if I leave him as a cat, his mind is likely to morph as well- and it won't morph back."

Cyborg said nothing. Raven started to reach to pet Beast Boy on the head and caught herself just in time. "You're right. It's an extremely bad idea. It could hurt him further, psychologically speaking. But as the choice is between risking Beast Boy…losing his mind, essentially, and _knowing _it's going to happen…" She looked at Cyborg again. He swallowed hard and wondered if she knew her eyes were glowing white. "I'll take the risk over the certainty."

"…Yeah." That was all Cyborg said, as she offered her other shoulder and they resumed their slow progress down the hall. Their steps were shuffling, with Raven supporting most of their combined weight, and the darkness seemed to drag on.

It was a long while before Beast Boy seemed to rouse out of the stupor he'd fallen into. The first thing he said was, dazedly, "Raven?"

"I'm right here. Can you walk?"

"I…I think so."

"Good, because I can't keep carrying you both." Slowly, she eased his arm from around her shoulders. He stumbled immediately and she caught him with an arm around his waist. If she noticed Cyborg's sidelong glance, she gave no indication. Beast Boy didn't pull away and neither did she. When Raven looked up again, she realized why it was a fun house.

The dark corridor had come to an end. Directly in front of them, the walls became a series of rolling barrels, each one going in the opposite direction of the one before it. Raven halted as she realized she had no idea how they were going to transverse the barrels. Ordinarily, it would have been a simple matter of keeping her balance and walking across, but she had Cyborg relying on her for support and Beast Boy clinging to her.

"Cyborg. Do you think you can make it across here, before we cross?"

She didn't explain why. She didn't have to. Cyborg's body was heavy, much heavier than her or Beast Boy; if he fell on them, now, as he was sure to do if they crossed the rolling expanse together…well. She had no dark aura to protect her at the moment, and Beast Boy's only available form was smaller and more vulnerable. They would be crushed.

"I can try." And before she could ask what he meant by that, Cyborg had lurched forward, leaving her unbalanced. She caught herself on the wall, tried hard to ignore the slight whimper from her other side, and watched as Cyborg made halting progress across the rolling barrels. His missing foot impeded him, but not as much as she would have thought. His weight worked for him as long as he was the only one on the path; there was simply too much of him to displace, and so he was able to rely on the moving walls for the support she had supplied.

As soon as he made it to the next barrel, Raven stepped into the first one with Beast Boy still close beside her. She stepped forward in a rhythm and kept her balance through that barrel and the next. On the last one, however, Beast Boy's feet tangled in her cloak and brought them both tumbling to the ground. The motion threw him against her before she could regain her feet and she found herself with an armful of green shape shifter, something that seemed to happen all too often recently. She hauled herself, and him, to her feet and immediately stumbled against the wall. She caught at the edge and shifted both of them forward into the corridor where Cyborg waited. She glared at him, daring him to comment. He took one look at the shaking changeling pressed close beside her and chose not to.

The corridor took a sharp turn. Raven, again supporting Cyborg, peered around it first. Even without her powers, she was currently the strongest of them. She drew back quickly and Cyborg loosed a quiet curse at the expression on her face. "What is it?"

Her lips barely moved as she answered. "Mirror maze."

Before he had a chance to ask what was so bad about that, she was moving forward, cloak brushing lightly over the ground. As soon as they turned the corner they were confronted with a hundred distorted images of themselves.

Beast Boy let out a strangled cry and dove for the safety of Raven's cloak. To Cyborg's surprise, she lifted the edge and allowed him to hide inside it, even draping it back over him and seeming to draw him closer. She stepped into the mirror maze slowly, wishing she had a free hand to hold in front of her. Cyborg solved the problem by putting his free hand forward and stopping whenever he hit a solid object.

Raven was distracted by odd memory-flashes that she knew very well did not belong to her. She had never seen Terra staring wide-eyed at a surrounding of mirrors, she had never been furious enough to shift to shatter those mirrors, but at the moment she felt as if she had. She was paying more attention to Beast Boy's memories flooding her mind than to her surroundings, so she was startled when the wall-mirror just ahead of them shattered and Robin flew through it, landing heavily on his side. He sprang to his feet and whipped out his bo staff before charging right back through the hole he'd just made in the wall.

Starfire darted into the breach in the wall before they could react. Raven quirked an eyebrow and Cyborg stifled a chuckle- the Tamaranean's hair was covered in cotton candy, and she clutched a mallet in one hand that appeared to have been torn from a Whack-a-Mole game.

"Come friends, the Mumbo is fighting most fiercely! Robin has been fighting most fiercely since the Ferris wheel, but he needs help!"

"Told ya," Cyborg muttered quietly as Starfire grasped his shoulders and hoisted him into the air. Raven followed them outside much more slowly, blinking when she emerged into the waning daylight. Robin abruptly charged past her once again, using his bo staff to pole vault into Mumbo and plant a kick that sent the erstwhile magician reeling.

"So I'm guessing he did something to irritate our fearless leader?" Raven asked dryly, as Robin's kick landed him in a back handspring that turned into a cartwheel that ended with a barrage of birdarangs being hurled at Mumbo.

Starfire smiled sheepishly. "Ah…"

Raven followed her friend's gaze to a rather large Ferris wheel, one bedecked in glittering images of stars and robins, and felt her mouth twitch. Sitting still at the top of the wheel was a car decorated on Christmas colors with a suspiciously shaped hole in it- the kind of hole Robin's explosives might have made.

"Told ya," Cyborg said again, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. Star set him down gently near his detached foot and flew off to help Robin, starbolts and an oversized rubber mallet flying from her hands. Raven closed her eyes and flung out a hand.

"Azarath Metrion Zin-" _Ow,_ She shook her head, dazed, as a shock shivered through her body and glanced again at the bracelet on her wrist. Beast Boy poked his head out of her cloak and looked at it inquiringly. "It's blocking my powers," she told him, disgruntled. His eyes slid from her face to the bracelet, and before she could react he was a green cat balanced precariously on her arm. She started to scold him to_ stay in human form_ but he mewed up at her and sliced his claws through the bracelet. It fell to the ground in pieces. Raven stared at it for an instant before snapping her gaze back to Mumbo and snapping magic bonds around him as well.

"Azarath, Metrion, _Zinthos_!"

Between her dark energy cocoon, Robin's rope, and the steel girder Starfire wrapped around him- one suspiciously emblazoned with stars and robins- Mumbo wasn't going anywhere until the police showed up. Cyborg spent the time waiting for them ratcheting his foot back on.

Raven left early, leaving Robin and the others to deal with the cops. They had all agreed it would be better if Beast Boy's condition was not public knowledge. He shifted back to human as she flew them back to the Tower.

She landed on the roof and drew her cape back around herself, leaving Beast Boy shivering in the middle of the concrete expanse. Raven started to speak when a peal of thunder interrupted her. She looked around the still clear sky and sighed. "Let's go inside and _then_ talk. If a storm is blowing in, we'll want to be inside."

Beast Boy followed her meekly through the main room and into the hallway where she hesitated a moment before walking into his room. She nudged aside dirty laundry, old Zoobooks magazines, and a DVD of something called Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force Go before she was able to sink down onto his bottom bunk. She patted the space next to her and he sat down, immediately sinking against her side and staying there. She started to shrug him away and thought better of it. "Look, Beast Boy. You are not an animal. You are not a pet. I'm running out of ways to say this. You're in human form, at least- so why are you still acting like a cat?"

_I'll just be a cat. _She had the unsettling feeling that those words would haunt her for a long, long time.

He looked at her, wide-eyed. She stared back and huffed in frustration. "You spoke earlier. What's wrong now?"

When Beast Boy rubbed his head against her side, seeking affection, she'd had enough. She pushed him away and held him in place with a controlled burst of her powers, then looked him in the eyes. "_You are not a pet._ You're also staying in your own room tonight, both because you are not my pet and because Robin would skin us both. Starfire is his exception; you and I are not."

He didn't look away, but she couldn't have said if he understood her or not. She sighed and set him down gently, exiting the room without looking back. She had the uncomfortable feeling that he would be sitting in the middle of his bed staring at her.

She ran into Cyborg in the main room. He raised a hand in greeting. "Hey, Raven. We just got back. This storm just blew in- it looks like it's gonna be a fierce one."

Lightning flashed and illuminated the Tower, underscoring his words. "I know. Beast Boy's in his room- your session is tonight, and as soon as it's over I'm getting some sleep. I know it's still early, but would you mind having it now?"

Cyborg laid a hand on her shoulder. "I think we already had one in the Fun House, Rae. Go and get some sleep."

She was speechless for a moment. She should have told him no, should have insisted they sit down and have a real session, should have made sure she wasn't going to get into the habit of letting any sessions slip.

She did none of those things. She went to sleep.

Raven woke up sometime in the dead of night- not surprising, considering she'd gone to sleep early and napped on the roof before that. She listened for a moment before hearing what had awoken her.

Beast Boy was crying out. She phased through the walls into his room, wondering blearily why no one else was coming to check on him before she remembered that they couldn't hear him. She found him curled up at the head of the bottom bunk and staring wildly around the room. As soon as he saw her he launched himself at her and she hugged him back awkwardly. He buried his face in her neck and it wasn't until she hesitantly placed a hand on his head, trying to be comforting, and it glanced off his ears that she realized what the problem was.

More than anything, Beast Boy relied on his senses, likely more so recently. To suddenly lose one of them…Dead silence, for him, had to be frightening.

_He can hear me. _The thought rang through her mind with sudden crystal clarity.

Later, she wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but when she went to sleep that night Beast Boy was curled up on an old cloak of hers on her bedroom floor. She spoke until her voice was hoarse, until he fell asleep.

She surprised herself by telling him fairy tales. Not the watered-down Disney versions Star liked so much- Raven had discovered, to Robin and Cyborg's endless amusement, that she was incapable of watching Snow White without something nearby blowing up in frustration- but the older, darker tales she herself was fond of. Baba Yaga and her chicken-legged house in the woods where she lured naughty children; Beauty and the Beast, where the beast was human but no less a monster; The Little Mermaid, where the mermaid died for the love of a prince that never knew. He feel asleep sometime during the story of the two brothers with long and short names, where the brother with the long name fell into the well and the brother with the short name could not draw breath enough to call out the lengthy name for help, a story the monks of Azarath had been fond of, and she fell asleep soon after.

The last thing she glimpsed before sleep was Beast Boy thoroughly entangled in the dark cloak, eyes shut and smiling.

...And if Robin had a probem with it, she'd just have to let slip to the tabloids that a certain alien princess slept in the Boy Wonder's room.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Reviews always appreciated- the feedback from the last chapter thrilled me. The last fairy tale Raven tells is the one that was mine and my brother's favorite when we were little- remembering the whole name was a game to us, it was something like Tikki Tikki Tembo No Serrembo Cherry Berry Rusapit Perri Pembo, and I have no idea what the tale is actually called. Also, Disney's _Snow White_ is an insult to all women everywhere. The last time I watched any of it I threw things. 

...Of course, my parents really told us the old fairy tales, and the stranger ones, so I could be a little biased.

The next update shouldn't take as long- some stuff happened back home in the midst of this one. As always, thank you for reviews, they are very much appreciated and motivate me to write more.

Saiyoko


	9. The White Plains

**Disclaimer:** I have Beast Boy's attention span, Raven's cooking skills, and Robin's trust issues, but unfortunately for me that is all I have of the Titans.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_It is curious—curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.  
-Mark Twain _

**9.**

**The White Plains **

Raven wasn't sure if she went Dreamwalking that night consciously or unconsciously. She supposed it didn't matter. The result was the same; she found herself in the Gyre, walking through knee-high grass to the 'delightful metal wheel.' To her surprise, it was raining lightly.

"This place has _weather_?" she wondered out loud.

A giggle answered her. She glanced ahead to the unofficial meeting place and saw that the wheel was already occupied.

Starfire sat across from a shyly smiling Beast Boy, cards laid out between them as the carousel drifted in a lazy circle. They appeared to be playing War, a simple card game that Robin had taught Starfire a long time ago. The rain seemed to vanish just before it would have hit the cards. Raven drifted onto the purple metal and watched as Starfire slapped down an eight, beating Beast Boy's measly four, and drew back both cards triumphantly.

The green wolf was sprawled out on her purple section already. He opened one eye to peer at her, thumped his tail lazily in greeting, and went back to sleep.

"Friend Raven!" Starfire said brightly. "It is wondrous to see you! Perhaps you wish to play?" Starfire held out another deck of cards eagerly and Raven lifted a hand to her forehead.

_Another deck…?_ Raven looked at the pile of cards each held and sighed. _They're playing with two decks. And I'll bet neither one of them has a _full_ deck._ "Maybe…some other time, Star." She settled on the platform, resting against the green wolf, and watched as the game played out. She should really stop them, try and figure out what was wrong with Beast Boy, but watching them enjoying themselves so much she found she couldn't bring herself to interrupt. Not when they seemed so…well…happy.

She occupied herself glancing around the Gyre. Besides the grown-out grass and the spring rain, an old oak tree had sprung up with a tire swing hanging from it, next to a line of seesaws. She glanced back at the card game. Star was shuffling the last of the cards back into her hands, smiling smugly. Raven repressed another sigh when she saw the tattered edge of a Joker card poking out from between Star's fingers. Then her eyes slid back to the seesaws, seemingly without her consent.

_I shouldn't. I really shouldn't._

…But then, Azarath didn't have playgrounds.

"Starfire, Beast Boy," she said slowly. They turned to face her, expressions inquiring. "I know this is going to sound strange, coming from me- but- uh- can we, maybe, go play on the seesaws?"

Starfire's face positively lit up. "Oh, yes, let us rejoice on the sees of saw!" The Tamaranean flew across to the first seesaw, Raven and Beast Boy following more slowly. The wolf stayed where it was, seemingly going to sleep. Raven levitated up to the higher end of the one Beast Boy sat down on and started it slowly bouncing it back and forth between them, watching in amusement as Starfire made every attempt to run up her seesaw and leap off the end before it could touch the ground. To her surprise, on the fourth or so try Star almost managed it, pausing triumphantly at the top for a split second before the board slammed back down to the ground. Raven smiled faintly as Star flitted over to the board she shared with Beast Boy and started 'surfing' in the middle. Star's laughter was contagious, and before she realized it Raven giggled.

The grass shot up a foot higher, encased in dark energy. Raven stopped and stared, her hood falling back. Starfire laughed again and Raven almost winced.

"Watch, Friend Raven!" The princess raised a hand encased in green glow and aimed a starbolt at the nearby tree. To Raven's surprise, the tree seemed to absorb the green burst and channel it into a patch of flowers that sprang up between its roots. A second blast tugged the roots into something resembling a living couch. Beast Boy immediately leapt off the seesaw and ran to curl up on it. Raven followed him at a much more sedate pace. Almost as soon as she sat down, however, Beast Boy curled up and put his head in her lap, gazing up at her. She winced. Star turned to Raven with a giggle, one that was cut off as she cocked her head to the side, listening. "Robin calls," she said finally. "He has returned to his room."

Raven raised an eyebrow. "And, where has he been?"

"He and Cyborg brought back the brace of let the Mumbo had put on you, and Cyborg has been analyzing the brace of let while Robin…" Starfire paused, looked at Beast Boy, and concluded in a much quieter voice, "Robin has been constructing a diet, one with timetables and vegetarian alternatives. He is…much alarmed at the weight Beast Boy has lost."

Raven's eyes slid shut momentarily as she placed a hand on Beast Boy's side, feeling bones that were in much too stark relief. "He isn't the only one."

"I must go," Starfire replied absently, listening again. "He is calling."

Star floated gently down to the grass, closed her eyes, and vanished. Raven looked back down at Beast Boy, who had closed his eyes and cuddled closer, and wondered for the first time at his apparent need for human contact. She had assumed it was a side effect of his cat form, but what if she was wrong? What if Beast Boy had always craved touch and she'd just never noticed it? Besides Starfire, he was certainly the one to initiate hugs the most often.

It took her a moment to realize that she had moved from absently smoothing down his hair to scratching lightly behind his ears, or that he was leaning into her hand and making a sound very like a contented purr. As soon as she noticed what was going on she snatched her hand back, face reddening. Beast Boy slit his eyes open and glared up at her reproachfully.

For a long, frozen moment, Raven could only stare back at him. He shouldn't be like this. He shouldn't be acting this way. He should be healing. He should, at the very least, still be acting human deep in the Gyre, deep within his own mind.

And he wasn't.

And that scared her.

And for the first time, Raven began to fear that this damage was not something she could reverse. She began to fear that it had already been too late when she had collared him. Her fingers traced around the band of metal, present even here, snagging on the back where there was a tiny loop where the catch had been originally. She supposed it had changed when she replaced the collar. She hooked one finger through the loop, thoughtfully, noting that it was the right size for-

_For a leash._ It was the loop to attach a leash to. She shivered and Beast Boy tensed, ears flicking back. His eyes went from slit to wide as he stared up at her, his breathing sped up, and she drew her hand away. He relaxed immediately- and her thoughts came back to haunt her.

_What if I'm too late?_

He should have been acting more human, not less. What if there was nothing she could do? What if he really was going to turn completely cat and she couldn't stop it?

No.

_No._

_I am not going to lose him._

"Beast Boy, I need you to talk to me." She'd never been in the Gyre this long without him speaking, not even when he started to go completely cat before. _I think, now that it's not that barren platform from before, this is the most…restful place I've ever been. _Raven sighed and stood up. _And right now, I think I have to go deeper to accomplish anything._ She took a deep breath, moved Beast Boy away from her, and glided to the edge of the platform. Here, at the very edge, the grass faded into black obsidian. She paused and looked down, to far, far below where the colors swirled together. They were more faded than before. She sighed yet again, closed her eyes, and stepped off the edge.

Near the colors she could hear her voice fighting to overcome Terra's. She couldn't tell which was winning.

She knew as soon as she passed into the dream that it was a nightmare.

Beast Boy curled on the floor at her feet, resting on a huge pillow. She was sitting on a bed in a room that was very small, probably no more than six feet by six feet, and furnished only with the bed and pillow and with a small closet on one wall. Raven's gaze took in that Beast Boy's uniform was tattered and that he still wore a collar, but it was the one Soto had placed on him, complete with glowing energy leash affixed to the wall. The reach was much shorter than it had been in the space ship, however; the leash would only let him move a couple of feet, at the most. Raven went back to staring at Beast Boy, who was shivering with cold, until the door slid open. Terra walked in.

The geomancer didn't see her, which probably meant one of two things; either that this was a recurring nightmare, or that she was a passive participant this time. She had the feeling it was a recurring nightmare.

Terra was dressed in Slade's suit, reinforcing the impression that this was her room in Slade's lair. Clipped at her waist this time was the remote that sent shockwaves through the collar. Beast Boy shivered harder at the sight of it and Raven shivered too, 'remembering' how painful the shocks were.

"Terr…" He didn't even get her full name out before she had absently pushed the button at her hip. He yelped and twitched. Raven bolted from her seat and positioned herself in front of the other girl, who swept through her to the closet without seeming to notice.

"I'm leaving for a few days," Terra said absently, oblivious to the fact that Beast Boy was now curled around the pain centered in his stomach. "I have some errands to run." Opening the closet, she rummaged around in it until she pulled out a package of…something and tossed it on the floor in front of Beast Boy. "Here, don't eat it too fast. I'll feed you again when I get back."

And then she just…left. Ignored that she had just deeply hurt her former friend and left, the door locking with a click behind her. Raven knelt on the floor and took a closer look at the 'meal' Terra had left and felt her stomach turn.

Raw meat, when Terra knew he was vegan. Raven dropped it and placed her hands on Beast Boy's shoulders, relieved that she didn't go through them as Terra had gone through her. "Beast Boy?"

He didn't react. She swallowed and ran her hands around _this _collar, though she wasn't sure how he'd gotten it off last time or how she could get it off now. A little bit of thought led her to surrounding it with her powers, carefully, since it was snug around his neck, encasing it in a force field to protect him and then…shattering it.

It didn't quite work as she had hoped. The leash was severed; the collar, though cracked, remained. It was enough, and it had gotten his attention and made her existence in the nightmare 'real.' Her mind skipped for a moment- she was messing with a recurring nightmare, changing it so that she would be there to rescue him each time he had it.

She decided it was worth it, and 'felt' with her mind at the edges of the dream, preparing a trick she'd only done in her own nightmares. "Gar?" This time, he turned to look up at her. Just as their eyes met, she finished her preparations and pulled them both through the gap in the dream that would land them both in Nevermore.

She got a shock when they tumbled from a swirl of color into a broad, white plain. Raven looked around, but could only see endless white in all directions, and realized that she was still clutching Beast Boy's shoulders and kneeling over him.

"This is not Nevermore," she said out loud. A mass of red hair swung down in front of her and she started.

"No," Starfire replied, smiling, "it is not." She righted herself and settled in front of them, pointing behind Raven. She looked where Star was pointing and saw color-swirls against the white, this time; directly behind them was a strange mix of purple and green. Raven looked around and also spotted red and blue, off in the distance.

"…Not to offend you, Star, but this is….really, really not where I intended to go."

"Nevermore is closed to you," Starfire, or Starfire's soulself, said.

For a long moment Raven could only stare at her friend.

"Robin has been assisting with the study of the brace of the let that Mumbo had burdened you with, and Cyborg has said that the Mumbo said something about a familiar. They think that the Mumbo has made him your familiar with the collar-spell."

Raven was pretty sure what she was feeling at this point was her heart plummeting. She mentally reviewed everything she knew about familiars- _ obeys, serves, and helps their master-_ and cursed inwardly. "That does not quite explain why I can't reach Nevermore."

Starfire shrugged. "Perhaps he is…protecting it?"

Beast Boy protecting her from her own mind. That did not bode well. "So why are we here and not in the Gyre? That would seem like the logical destination."

Starfire's smile turned sheepish. "I…pulled you…here?" she said apologetically. Raven dropped her head into her hands tightened her grip on Beast Boy's shoulders.

"In the morning, Starfire," she grit out, "you are coming to see me and you are getting some _training."_

"But the morrow is Beast Boy's day," Starfire pointed out in genuine surprise.

"And I think you're going to help me with him." She met Starfire's eyes. "You've got a natural talent for Dreamwalking. You have no idea how rare that is- and I think I'm going to need all the help I can get."

Shifting away from Beast Boy, Raven stood up and stepped towards the green and purple. Beast Boy stumbled to his feet and moved after her. "Thanks, Star, I'll see you in the morning."

It did not occur to Raven as she stepped through the colors that they were still asleep. It did not occur to her that she could be stepping back into a nightmare.

It was a different nightmare, this time, and a worse one. Raven found herself between Robin and Starfire, facing off against Terra, still in her apprentice uniform. Cyborg lay on the ground between them, not moving.

And Beast Boy was crouched miserably at Terra's feet, heavy collar weighing down his neck, chain leading from the collar to Terra's hand. He shuddered as Robin called out.

"Titans, GO!"

Raven did not worry overly much about Robin, even when Terra sent rocks flying at him from all sides without moving. She'd seen Robin dodge worse, many times over. He was fast.

This time, he was not fast enough. Rocks caught him, crushed him, fled and dropped his broken body on the asphalt. Starfire rushed to his side- she was caught and flung by rocks as well, and her body joined his. Raven had stopped her own approach, breathing heavily and trying to get her heart out of her mouth.

_Dream. Dream. It's just a dream._

_…And that means she can kill me just as easily as she just did them, even in a dream_.

Terra advanced slowly, dragging Beast Boy with her. She paused and studied Raven, smirking. "You know, Rae," she said conversationally, "I could never have done it without him." She reached down and patted Beast Boy on the head. He crouched lower and shuddered again. "He's a _good_ boy, wouldn't you agree? He'll probably get a treat for this." Terra raised her hands to strike, Raven raised her hands to shield both against Terra's assault and the horrible rush of emotions from Beast Boy- guilt, anger, humiliation-

Then Raven felt as if something had grabbed her around the waist and _yanked_, and felt herself tumble back onto the white plains. She didn't bother looking around this time, just grabbed Beast Boy as he tumbled out after her and hugged him tightly, the way she hadn't hugged him since the Malchior incident. With her eyes still closed and her face pressed into his shoulder, she breathed, "Thanks, Star."

"You are welcome."

"…Is it all right with you if we just…spend the rest of the night here?"

"Yes, it is all right."

"And I'll train you in the morning. First thing in the morning." Raven slid all the way to the ground, drawing Beast Boy with her. She really, really did not want to let him go. Any worries she had about teaching Starfire to Dreamwalk were gone.

She only wished she'd taught her sooner.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko: **Thanks to ShinobiCyrus on the idea for the second nightmare. For whatever reason, I don't actually have nightmares, so writing them is a challenge. 

Please, please, please review. When you don't, it makes me think the chapter was disliked.


	10. Memory Lane

**Disclaimer:** I wish. I'm still fighting over ownership of a one bedroom apartment with my cat- and so far, the cat is winning.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Strength and courage aren't always measured in medals and victories. They are measured in the struggles they overcome. The strongest people aren't always the people who win, but the people who don't give up when they lose.  
Ashley Hodgeson _

**10.**

**Memory Lane**

It was a long time before Raven so much as moved. She sat up slowly and opened her eyes, glancing around. She didn't see Starfire's soulself and assumed the other girl was asleep and dreaming. Beast Boy was curled up beside her in the fetal position. Raven gently reached down and hauled him to a sitting position.

He was still shaken up from the nightmare, ears pinned back, eyes wide. He leaned into her and made a little mewling sound of distress, making her wince. She really wanted to just stay where she was until she woke, but there was one last thing she had to do before teaching Starfire in the morning. After this it could be a while before she had another chance.

"Beast Boy," she said gently, watching his ears flick towards her, "I need to see your memories again."

He nestled closer and nodded. Raven stood and walked back through their light, bracing herself and holding on tightly to Beast Boy, but this time they landed safely in the Gyre. Raven set the soulself on the metal wheel, where the wolf was waiting calmly, took a deep breath, and leapt off the edge.

She plummeted towards the light, not slowing herself with her powers this time. She couldn't help but feel that if she gave herself that much time to back out of it she might not be able to go through with this again.

She shot through the colors.

She was trapped, pinned beneath an avalanche of rock, and a sliver of stone fastened through her leg prevented her from shifting. Too small and she'd tear the limb off, too large and her leg would be crushed by the surrounding stone. She risked a shift to human and knew from the energy expended that even if there hadn't been a rock through her leg she wouldn't have had the energy left to shift again.

"Terra…no…" She could feel pressure at the back of her eyes. She didn't want to believe that Terra could kill her, but the girl had already tried…had already thought she had succeeded.

"He's too powerful. I can't stop him!"

"Yes, you can." And unbidden, the thought: _Robin could. Robin could, and he doesn't have any powers, and when Slade told him to attack Starfire he _stopped. _When he attacked again, he was trying to _save _us!_ "It's your power, not his. You can still control it…you can still do the right thing."

"It's too late."

And she held her breath as Terra formed a wicked-looking point of rock just above her, aimed at her neck. _She's really going to kill me. She's really going to do it, this time. And the others aren't here to help me…_

"Stop!" It was Robin's voice, full of anger, and she felt relief rush through her. She may not have always agreed with Robin but she knew how seriously he took protecting his team.

"Strike, apprentice! Now!" _Don't…please don't…._

"Terra, no!" The command in Robin's voice was not something any of his Titans would have been able to ignore, but then, Terra had never really been one of _his_ Titans.

And then Raven herself melted out of the shadows, eyes glowing with anger, and breathed, "It'll be the last thing you ever do."

The sudden warm rush of gratitude, coupled with a sudden fierce love and pride in her friends, startled Raven into another memory.

She was roaring fiercely, swiping with huge claws at any of the flame-beings that came too close to her Raven, and Starfire's starbolts were flashing rapidly, Robin was moving faster than anyone human had any right to, Cyborg was channeling energy from the Tower itself to blast away at the encroaching army. There was one solid current of thought between the fighting Titans: _Protect Raven._ She darted into the next memory.

She was trembling and small, trying to withdraw into herself, shifting into a turtle without meaning to until someone struck her sharply and she returned to human with a gasp. The strange pale man in front of her let out a low growl and lifted her by the scruff of her neck. She kicked out at him, but could only hit air, and he addressed the other man in the room, the other man who'd taken her from Africa and King Tawaba where she was _safe_. The blond man muttered to the other man, the one with dark hair. "I say we just sell the brat. D'you know how much money we could get from a freak like him?"

She shook. The argument continued, but she was stuck on _sell the brat_. Suddenly there was a loud noise, and the arm holding her went limp, and she fell to the floor covered in something warm, sticky, and red.

Raven fled the memory.

She was staring at… Raven (_at myself)_, hardly daring to breathe. She'd thought she was _gone_… "Are you still…you?"

"Blue is still my favorite color. And don't get used to the smile, cuz you're still not funny."

She stared a moment longer, then launched herself with an ecstatic cry of "_Raven!_", latching her arms around her and allowing animal instincts to take over a moment as she nuzzled her.

"Quit it."

The memory shuddered and she was wheeling in the sky, a green osprey, calling in despair as a boat below her went over a waterfall. _Mom! Dad!_

That was too much for her. Raven retreated from Beast Boy's memories and back into the Gyre, shaking her head to clear out lingering thoughts. It was very, very strange to be having such thoughts about _herself_, as was having just hugged herself.

She gazed at the huddled soulself, not quite knowing what to say, and was saved from having to say anything by Robin's voice calling her name. She opened her eyes to see the Boy Wonder standing over her, looking worried. "Star asked me to come wake you. Is everything all right?"

"As much as it was last night," she sighed, sitting up and automatically checking for Beast Boy. He was right where she'd left him, curled in her cloak beside her bed. Robin followed her gaze and frowned.

Raven spoke before he could say anything. "He was freaking out last night. He wasn't going to get any sleep in his own room." Her eyes locked with his and challenged him to say anything.

He backed down. "Breakfast is ready. Cyborg made it- he didn't put any meat in it."

_Breakfast…maybe training Star won't be _first _thing. I feel like I haven't eaten in days._

"Thanks. I think I'll shower first." She winced. "And that reminds me, Beast Boy needs a shower. I'm not touching that."

Robin winced as well. "Cyborg and I will handle it later. Just come eat when you've showered."

Raven nodded. "I'll meet you in the kitchen."

Robin left, and Raven stood and stretched. Beast Boy, still on the floor, rose to all fours and stretched as well. She had to shut the door almost in his face when she went to take a shower, or she thought he would have followed her in. When she emerged, feeling clean for the first time in days, she had to phase through the wall because he was sitting with his back against the door. Raven sighed and started towards the common room and kitchen and heard him get up to trail after her.

Cyborg met her at the kitchen door, holding what looked like a platter full of tofu dogs and glancing anxiously behind her at Beast Boy. _He must be really worried. I've never seen him make Beast Boy's tofu before._

Raven sat down at the table to eat. A moment later she had to get up and haul Beast Boy into a chair, he'd sat down at her feet.

She was deeply relieved that he at least used his hands when he ate.

Almost as soon as she had finished, Beast Boy morphed into a cat and leapt into her arms with a tiny mew. She stood frozen for a minute as a shock of emotions hit, too suddenly for her to cut them off or even dim them down. It was a strange, sweet ache centered somewhere deep in her chest, pulsing stronger as she drew the tiny green cat close- and when he gave a kitten-sigh, hooked his claws into her collar, and snuggled against her, the microwave imploded. Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire froze.

"I'll take care of that," Cyborg volunteered after a moment. Starfire rose to help him and Robin looked to Raven and smiled weakly.

"So, I guess he's staying in cat form for his bath?"

Raven nodded, not trusting herself to speak around the strange lump in her throat. She realized that as worried as she was for Beast Boy, some part of her enjoyed having someone else depending on her. It was, she thought morosely, quite possibly the closest she would ever get to being a mother. She didn't know how her demon physiology would handle pregnancy or even if it would handle it at all. Even if the child could shapeshift, she doubted….Raven's eyes widened.

_I did _not _just think that._

From behind her, she heard Cyborg's startled shout as something else blew apart. From the sound, she thought it might have been their refrigerator. _Well, we did need to buy food._ She followed Robin out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom. Raven walked in first and unceremoniously dropped the cat in the tub, rubbing her eyes as he meowed up at her indignantly. He rose on his hind legs and scrabbled at the edge of the tub, but his nails slid off the slick surface. Robin turned on the water and Beast Boy backed away from the faucet with a hiss. Raven sighed and stepped out the door. "I'll just wait out here, where he can still smell me." Robin nodded absently.

Half an hour later, Robin emerged from the bathroom, dripping wet, bloody scratches all along his arms, mask askew, and holding a hissing, spitting- and clean- cat. He dropped him into Raven's lap, hissed, "Never again," and left to find Starfire and a lot of Band-Aids. Raven repressed laughter.

She stared down at the cat and sighed. It was past time to go find Starfire and start her lessons in Dreamwalking, but she didn't particularly want to be within striking distance of Robin at the moment. So she tried something she'd never done before that only Starfire's mind-lights had suggested to her.

She reached out with her mind and brushed the consciousness of the other Titans slowly- not new, but not something she had ever taken quite so far as she was planning to. She found the red glow associated with Robin and murmured in his mind, _Can you send Starfire to see me when you're done?_

She felt his astonishment, then his assent. She laid her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, finding she felt too tired to move. At some point Beast Boy reverted to human, but stayed curled in her lap, and she didn't really have the energy or desire to push him away.

"Raven?"

She tilted her head slightly. "Starfire."

"Robin has said that you wished to see me."

"Yeah." She thought about getting up. Thinking about moving made her tired muscles ache more. She knew, intellectually, that she had spent last night safe in her own room. Unfortunately, her body refused to believe that. "I promised I'd train you." She thought for a moment. "Who's room is closest?"

"Friend Beast Boy's, I believe."

Raven groaned and slowly pulled herself up the wall, bringing Beast Boy with her. "Then we're going to do this in his room. I don't think I'm going to manage getting much further down the hallway."

When they were settled in Beast Boy's room, Raven was stretched out along the bottom bunk with Beast Boy beside her. Starfire had flown up to the top bunk where she could rest comfortably while still in earshot of Raven.

"Relax. Let yourself go limp, become comfortable with your surroundings." That was easier in her own room, Raven decided. Beast Boy's room, while comfortable in the manner a den was comfortable, had several odd piles of…._stuff_ that looked as if they might spring to life.

Still. It was no stranger than Tamaran.

"Focus on your breathing, slow it down. In, out, in, out." She heard Starfire's breath even out, slowing to match her own. Their breathing was in rhythm, though Beast Boy's beside her was slightly faster than the normal human and slightly slower than the alien or the half-demon. That didn't overly concern her; his breathing had always been fast for a human. "Find the place your powers come from and focus on it. It's called your center, and it's important for both meditation and Dreamwalking." Which Starfire knew, but a refresher course never hurt. Raven was silent for a long while, allowing Starfire to center herself. She could feel the shift in her friend's emotions when she did so. "Now let yourself drift and find the emotions you associate with Beast Boy. When you locate them, welcome them, and move through them."

Raven fell silent, eyes closed, waiting for Starfire to pull them into the Gyre. She had confidence in Starfire; after all, the other girl had managed to pull them from the Gyre into her own mindscape, twice.

So Raven was slightly surprised to open her eyes and find herself standing between Beast Boy and a sheepishly smiling Starfire in what closely resembled what she had always imagined the Batcave to look like.

"…Friend Raven? I fear I have…made a mistake."

This could take longer than she had thought.

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Parts of Beast Boy's past are embellished here, but I by no means made them up. A little bit of online searching will tell anyone interested about his past.

...Reviews?


	11. Interlude: Deleted Scenes

**GuardianSaiyoko:** I know it's been a while since I updated. Anyone who checked my profile or who reads _Whitewater _knows why- finals, and then my grandparents staying at my apartment for a week. The next chapter is being aggravating, too, as for some reason I'm finding Robin very difficult to keep in character during it. As a result, I've ended up watching Batman, Batman Begins, the Trouble in Tokyo movie, and most of Season One of Teen Titans. Still having difficulty.

So, to assuage my guilt a little, enjoy some Deleted Scenes.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_It is sometimes a mistake to climb, it is always a mistake never even to make the attempt.  
-Dream, in SANDMAN: "Fear of Falling" _**  
**

**00. **

**Interlude: Deleted Scenes**

* * *

**Original Beginning**

**Reason for Deletion:** On re-reading, it seemed overly angsty.

"Raven, have you seen Beast Boy?"

Raven cracked one eye open in the midst of her meditation and eyed Robin. "No. I haven't." She returned to meditating an instant later. The reprieve was short-lived, as a gloved hand clamped down on her shoulder. Her eyes shot open and she glared at Robin. "I _said_ I haven't seen him."

"Raven, when is the last time you _did_ see BB?"

"…Three days ago, when I asked him to please not change into anything with fur in the kitchen."

Robin slung himself over the back of the couch and yanked her from the air to settle on it beside him. "Rae, we have a problem."

"What?" she bit out, clearly annoyed at having her meditation interrupted.

"Three days ago was the last time anyone's seen Beast Boy."

Raven shrugged slightly, black power pulling her hood over her head. "He's probably just off sulking."

"For three days? That's not like BB. That's like, well, you."

Raven glared at him. He shrugged apologetically.

"Seriously, I'm worried about the little guy. The last time he was gone anywhere near this long was when some alien kidnapped him and wanted him to be his dog."

"…He's been gone longer than three days before, Robin."

"Not without an explanation. Raven, I want you to look for him."

The girl sighed. "All right. Where am I searching?"

"I want you to search the Tower itself. Star's out searching the park, Cy's at the pizza place, and I'm gonna go search some of his other hangouts."

"Wait, why am I-"

Robin was gone.

"- searching the Tower," Raven finished with a sigh. She levitated up off the couch and swept through the Tower.

"Now if I was Beast Boy, where would I be," she mused quietly, "inside the Tower. Dammit, Robin, if no one's seen him why would he still be _in_ here?" She fumed as she glided into the kitchen and took a look around. "Beast Boy, are you in here? Robin's getting worried about you." She sighed again. "This isn't funny, Beast Boy. Everyone's looking for you. So if you're busy being a fly on the wall or something, now is not the time."

He wasn't in the kitchen. "Couldn't Cyborg have stayed behind and, I don't know, scanned for you or something? I thought he knew about anything that _moved_ in the Tower." He wasn't in the living room. "This is ridiculous. There's no reason for you to be hiding in your own home."

"There's no reason not to." Beast Boy's voce sounded sad, tired, and nearby. Raven whirled quickly and scanned the hallway. "C'mon, Rae. How long did it take you guys to notice I was gone?"

"Robin says I was the last one to see you, three days ago. I spend most of my time in my room, Beast Boy. I would not see you if you did not want to be seen." Raven spun around again at a bitter laugh.

"That was five days ago, Raven. C'mon, I thought you were better with details than that. Robin, too."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Original Beginning to Chapter Six**

**Reason for Deletion:** After the final edit, it didn't fit in with the rest of the chapter anymore.

When Raven went to sleep that evening- after a long meditation to ensure it would be _her _sleep she went to- it was on her back with a green cat curled up beside her, claws dug into her cape where it spread across the bed, head resting lightly on her arm.

She was floating above Titan's Tower. She gazed off across the ocean. It was either late at night or early in the morning and the dark clouds were gathering on the horizon. She eyed the clouds; judging by how dark they were and how quickly they gathered, it was going to be one hell of a storm.

Beast Boy was standing at the edge of the roof, looking down and across the ocean. Raven floated down beside him and tried to see what it was that had him so interested. There wasn't anything that she could see, so she turned to ask him and then quickly turned back.

There _was_ something interesting.

The ocean didn't look like the seaside Jump she was used to. It looked like black glass, even to the point of reflecting lightning from the sky, producing a very odd effect. Lines of light chased each other into darkness and she whirled again at a soft whimper from behind her.

Iron bars had sprung up around Beast Boy, trapping him. Soto loomed out of the gathering storm clouds and spoke Slade's words in Terra's voice. The only word Raven could make out was _pet_, but she knew what the rest of the sentence was.

_This can't be right. This is supposed to be _my_ dream. _The thought had a desperate undercurrent to it._  
_

Lightning flashed again, brightly, and the reflection met the sky and seemed to light up the entire world briefly before plunging everything into the pitch black of true dark.

When she woke up the next morning, Beast Boy's hands were twined deep into the fabric of her cape and his face was pressed into the crook of her arm.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Deleted Scene from Chapter Seven**

**Reason for Deletion:** I felt like I was wandering off topic. The main subject in this segment is explored in _Whitewater. _

Later, they were never sure who resumed the game, or as it had become in Cyborg's mind, the Game. He felt the capital letter was definitely necessary as long as he was playing the Game with Raven.

"I still miss the Hive, sometimes. I liked having a sort-of relationship with Jinx."

"I enjoy watching old musicals."

"…Like what?"

"Les Miserables, for one."

"…It _would_ be a depressing one."

"You've seen Les Mis?"

"…Uh, maybe?"

Raven turned her head abruptly. At some point Beast Boy had managed to drape her cloak partly over himself as well; now he was hiding beneath it, the tips of his ears poking out. When Raven turned back to Cyborg, a ghost of a smile was playing about her lips. "He says that before Star showed up in Jump, he was living in the park by the Tower- he kept shifting into a duck and conning a nearsighted old man for food."

Cyborg chuckled, half in relief and half in surprise. "Yeah, that sounds like BB. He's playin', then?" At Raven's nod he continued. "I had a girlfriend before I got the prosthetics, but she dumped me afterwards."

"Sometimes it feels disturbingly like Robin is trying to be a father figure, watching over a bunch of little kids in a tower."

"It also feels like Starfire's trying to fill in the 'mother' role."

"Better her than me," Raven muttered, before translating the last few parts of the conversation to Beast Boy. Then she was silent for a long moment while she recalled a piggyback ride and a story told to a small child at the end of the world, Beast Boy and Cyborg falling silent as well, though she didn't know what memories they might be recalling.

Cyborg's question interrupted her thoughts. "Doesn't that ever seem, well, _weird_ to you? I mean, Robin's younger than me. He may even be younger than you and Star, I'm not sure."

Raven took her time answering. "It isn't as strange as it seems at first. We function as both a team and a family unit- I suppose it was natural that we began to assume roles."

"Yeah, but how did _Robin_ end up as a father-figure?"

Raven shrugged slightly, careful not to dislodge either Cyborg or Beast Boy. "Robin took on the role of leader, and in doing so took on responsibility for all of us. You've seen how personally he takes it when any of 'his' team is injured. And we are his, you know that as well as I do- his team, his home, his responsibility."

"You know, I feel like that should bother me," Cyborg commented, "but instead it's almost comforting. I mean, I didn't exactly have a good relationship with my father, and we've all met yours." Mothers were not mentioned. Mothers were something of a taboo subject for the Titans, and no one ever brought up why. "We did meet Mento, too, and Star's k'norfka. But I don't think he was actually her father, and Star's sister makes a habit of trying to make her miserable. I'm not sure any of us have a real father figure, excepting Beast Boy, and for whatever reason BB _left_ the Doom Patrol. "

"…Robin has a father." Her words made Cyborg stop a moment. "Batman_ is_ his father..."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Original Beginning to Chapter Ten **

**Reason for Deletion: **Felt like I was rambling.

Raven woke slowly the next morning, feeling exhausted. She felt like she needed to sleep for a few more days, but at the same time she really, really did not want to go back to sleep and risk another nightmare.

She turned over slowly and glanced down at the floor. Beast Boy was sprawled on his stomach with his head pillowed on his arms and his lower half tangled in her cloak, ears back as his chest rose and fell softly. "Beast Boy?" she said quietly. He rose to all fours and stretched out, exactly like a cat would, before yawning hugely, showing his teeth. Every time Raven saw him yawn she had to wonder about his vegetarianism; those were _definitely_ a predator's fangs. Then again, she didn't know exactly why he even had fangs, green skin and pointy ears; no one had asked him, just like no one had asked Cyborg what kind of accident he had or Raven why she had gray skin. It was an unwritten rule, right next to 'don't ask about families'- there were just some things that were strictly on a need-to-know basis. By now they all knew about her, and they had visited Starfire's home and even met the Doom Patrol, but it hadn't been necessary to learn where Beast Boy's powers came from.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** As you might have guessed from this, every chapter of this story goes through quite a few rewrites before actually getting posted. I apologize again and hopefully should have Chapter Eleven up soon. 


	12. Bolthole

**Disclaimer: **Sorry I've been gone for forever and a day, but there was a family emergency which, among other things, caused me to be confused with Dial-A-Shrink. I'm back from the dead now and have informed the rest of the family to go kill things in video games, as it's more productive than trying to get psychiatric help from me- I could use some myself, and I_ like_ being crazy.

This chapter beta'd by ShinobiCyrus. Thanks, Cy!

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over **

_"It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place- everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it."_

_---_The Winter of Our Discontent;_John Steinbeck. _

**11. **

**Bolthole**

"Starfire, when I said to think of Beast Boy…was there anything else on your mind?" Raven gritted her teeth and found she was devoutly thankful that her powers did not have adverse consequences inside her friend's minds. "_Anything at all,_ Star."

"Er…"

Raven turned slowly and glared at Starfire- or would have, if she hadn't noticed with a jolt that Beast Boy was looking around curiously. He was showing more interest than he had in days.

"W-well, Raven, you see I was…I may have been…somewhat distracted. I was thinking of what you had told me at our last session, about…er…Robin…"

"That's what I thought," Raven said absently, still watching Beast Boy and then glancing around herself. The most noticeable thing in the area was also the biggest, a portrait that took up an entire wall. She moved towards it; it had lifesize images of her, Beast Boy, Robin, and Cyborg, but painted in shadows behind them were Trigon, the Beast, Red X, and 'Stone', respectively. At the far left was an empty space. She could tell quite easily who it belonged to, because Starfire had her own picture off to the side, minus the dark side shadow.

It was pretty impressive, actually, that Starfire could bring them into Robin's mindscape. Beast Boy had no psychic shielding to speak of; his mind almost welcomed others in. That might have been a curse when fighting Mad Mod but it was a blessing in the situation they were in now. Robin, on the other hand, had the mental equivalent of a reinforced brick wall.

With armed guards and turrets.

It was exceedingly difficult to make any sort of mental jump into his mind- unless, apparently, you were Starfire.

_Starfire_. Where had she gone? She'd been_ right _next to her a minute ago!

Starfire, not noticing Raven's caution, was looking around with wide eyes and flew towards the ceiling of the cave for a better view. Bats flew at her from the shadows and she dropped back beside Raven with a startled shriek.

"W-what is going on?" Star asked, shaken.

Raven felt Beast Boy shift into a cat and leap to her shoulder. She didn't rebuke him. "Robin's mind is much better guarded than Beast Boy's. It's not safe here." She was very, very glad Starfire wasn't an empath in her own right. Bad enough that her nervousness was echoing down her link with Beast Boy- there wasn't enough of her to go around to keep both him and Star calm.

"How is it not safe?"

"I-"

But Raven never got to finish, because _something_ suddenly slammed into her and knocked her not only out of Robin's mind- but out of her _own_ as well-

-and suddenly she was tumbling, falling, drowning, _reaching_, and her reaching found a swirl of emotion and memory that was and wasn't hers and she felt so strongly that _she had to get away_ that made it hard to breathe, hard to think. There was a strong sense of _this is not home_, mixed with aching longing and the lurking thought that if she could just-go- get away- there were a million other places she could try-she could shift into a wolf or a hawk or a dolphin and just _go, _join a pack or -

Those were the thoughts that snapped her back to herself, mind still vibrating with an intensity of feeling. She was in Beast Boy's room still, though Starfire was nowhere to be seen. Beast Boy had shifted to a cat in reality and was curled up tightly at her side with his tail flicked over his eyes.

She gathered him up in her arms, unlatched the window and stepped out onto a dark disk of energy, before bolting towards the forest. She knew she should stay, report to Robin, check on Starfire, but she was half in Beast Boy's mind still. Her sight was doubled, she still felt the overwhelming urge to flee deep into the woods and the wild, and with her consciousness split the way it was she couldn't fight that urge. She darted out across the ocean until she came to shore again some miles away in a heavily wooded area.

Raven set them down in the lower branches of a towering oak. She felt safe, finally, beneath the thick cover of the branches. She recognized the spot, which was alarming because she'd never been there before.

Now she could sit down and analyze what in _hell _had just happened. Beast Boy meowed loudly and she set him down, half-hoping he would return to his human form but knowing he wouldn't. He darted past her on the wide branch and pawed at a knothole in the trunk. Raven frowned and twisted so she could reach in and pull out whatever he was worrying at.

She found herself with a battered journal in her hand, the kind of tiny notebook general stores sold for under five dollars. It was green. She stared at it until Beast Boy placed one paw on it and meowed plaintively. The message was as clear as words to her.

_Open it. Read._

Raven opened it. She would have read the first page, except that it was a drawing of a raven, or the second, but it was in a language she didn't know. She flipped to the third page, then rifled briefly through the rest of the little book before coming back to the beginning.

Drawings. Song lyrics. Quotes. Poems. Letters in another language.

Picture of a raven. A bear. A monkey, a rabbit, a tiger cub. Several of rock formations and of Terra.

She recognized some of the sayings. Some of them made her smile. "Communism is when man exploits man. Capitalism is exactly the opposite." "Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." "When you do not like the fight, change the rules." "It is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission."

Raven smirked at the last one. He lived by that most of the time. She flipped through the pages again, found a song, and read some of the lyrics quietly. "It's the beginning of the end/You know nothing lasts forever/ The beginning of a trend/You need someone there to care for you…" Raven trailed off. She knew the song, but she wouldn't have expected Beast Boy to know it. She snapped the journal shut abruptly and set it aside. On a hunch, she reached back into the knothole, hoping absently that no animals happened to live in it. One half of her split mind assured her that none did.

She drew back slowly and looked at what she held- a tattered photograph and a silver choker. She looked at the choker first. It was a gift from Terra, though she wasn't the one who remembered that, and it had a worn golden tag in the shape of a bone that had Beast Boy's name on it. Originally it had been a joke, but…

Raven shook her head firmly and glanced at Beast Boy, who had curled up against the trunk and flicked his tail across his nose. His eyes peered out at her. "Keep your memories to yourself," she said flatly. "I can't think with them crowding in like that." She put the choker back.

She picked up the photograph. A little blond boy with his parents, grinning as his father tousled his hair, somewhere deep in a jungle. There was a rip at one edge that was sealed over with clear tape.

The edge of the tree branch crackled with black energy.

Raven swallowed hard and put the photo back, then put the journal back as well. Beast Boy stretched, returned to hole and knocked a rock he'd apparently shoved aside earlier back to block the opening.

She twisted around on the branch, swinging her legs out into the air so she could turn and out her back to the trunk. Beast Boy mewed and leapt onto her lap where he curled up trustingly. The sun was sinking; they'd been gone a while. Raven closed her eyes and thought.

Robin's mental defenses were just as good as she had feared. Somehow, he had not only knocked her out of his mind but through her link with Beast Boy into the shifter's mind. That would explain why she was suddenly feeling his memories and thoughts as strongly as her own. Well, maybe not that suddenly, she amended after a moment. She'd been having flashes of his emotion and memories since she had first begun Dreamwalking to his dreams, but this…this was different. Before they had been distinct flashes, while now they seemed to be merging with her own. Although…she couldn't remember exactly when she'd stopped thinking seeing his memory flashes had become a regular part of life. That troubled her.

_Focus._ She had to focus. Robin would be wondering where they went. They'd been missing more than long enough for him to be truly alarmed, and he'd been a wreck recently. She shifted her weight and was again hit by emotions. _Here. Here is safe. Deep in the forest. _ The branch above them snapped with energy and fell. Raven sat back and _reached _for Robin instead. She dropped almost unthinkingly into Beast Boy's dreamscape, where the wolf waited for her on the carousel. She went to him with Beast Boy's soulself and they all stepped together onto the red metal, which was softly glowing.

They emerged back into the Birdcave. Raven immediately dodged in one direction with the soulself close behind as the wolf dove in another direction. She skidded to a halt and turned to see the apparition of Red X vanish. That Robin would have the Red X persona as a defense, even now, alarmed her. That wasn't the problem right now, she told herself, and steeled herself to wait.

In moments Robin's soulself appeared before them. "Where are you?" he demanded immediately, agitated. Raven could sense his worry and frustration. The wolf slunk up beside her.

She started to say "in the woods," then thought better of it. Obviously this place was special to Beast Boy and she wouldn't be the one to betray it. Judging by the state of what was hidden in the knothole, he hadn't been coming here long. "We're somewhere safe, and it looks like we'll be staying here a while. Starfire made a bit of a wrong turn Dreamwalking," now _there_ was an understatement, "and your defenses threw me all the way down the link with Beast Boy." Raven paused, considering what else she should say and how to phrase it. "Our minds are linked too strongly for me to undo right now, and he wants to stay right here, so I'm not going anywhere. Even if I could, _his _emotions are having an effect on _my _powers. Can you handle things without me for a bit?"

He didn't like it, she could read that in his face. After a moment he acquiesced. "You have your communicator?"

She nodded. "Always." They'd had too many mishaps in the past for her _not_ to carry the thing, the Brotherhood of Evil mishap notwithstanding.

Robin frowned. "I've been calling you on it." His tone stopped just short of an accusation.

"I didn't hear it," she told him honestly. "I was distracted." Then, "Can you do group sessions with the others until I get back? I'll Dreamwalk to Starfire as often as possible, but that may not be very often."

After a moment Robin nodded. Raven sighed, then reached down to ruffle the wolf's fur as they withdrew from Robin's mind, through Beast Boy's mind, until she was back in her own body. She opened her eyes and saw that it was full dark. Beast Boy was still in her lap; as she glanced down at him he turned slowly back to his human form, his legs now dangling slightly off her lap as he huddled closer. She wrapped one arm around him and settled more firmly against the tree trunk. The branch was wide, and comfortable, and she didn't really feel like trying to find somewhere more secure in the dark. She would sleep here, and worry about finding them some place more secure in the morning.

She could feel Beast Boy's emotions and memories teasing at the edge of her own, and knew with an almost-certainty that she was going to share his dreams whether she wanted to or not. At least now she'd still be able to feel rested.

She'd been trying to fix everything from the start, but it seemed things were just spiraling downhill.

Her last thought as she drifted into sleep was _Dear Azar, I hope I can fix this_.

Their dreams were strange that night. They ran, ghosting through the trees, silent and intangible as a phantom even as they plunged up to their haunches in swift clear water and drank deeply from the stream. They were free, no one would ever collar them again. They were of the good clean wild. Their head shot up and their ears laid back at a distant sound echoing through the forest. They leapt back to the bank and then they ran and ran and ran, nothing existed but the sharp fresh air that carried the scents of the world around them rushing by.

Raven woke disoriented at first light. She stretched and felt muscles pop. Sleeping in a tree probably wasn't good for them, she noted wryly. She looked down at Beast Boy, still huddled against her. His chest was still rising and falling in sleep, so she shifted herself around a bit to get more comfortable and lay back again, not wanting to wake him.

She knew what the dream had been _about_, but that didn't make it any less odd. She'd been running with the Beast in the part of Beast Boy's mind he claimed. She moved one arm carefully around her friend's sleeping form and rubbed wearily at her forehead and wondered how hard Robin had thrown her through the link if she was now able to feel the Beast as clearly as Beast Boy himself. The Beast was…wild. Not the unthinking wildness she had always privately expected, but a wild that was constituted of a life in the now. Anything that was not immediate was of lesser importance.

She could see what was calling so strongly to Beast Boy.

A life of freedom, without responsibility, without answering to anyone but herself. Living wild and free. It called her, too.

She couldn't have it. Neither could he, and somewhere, he knew it. That didn't stop… either of them… from _wanting_ it. The branch crackled warningly again and Raven forced her emotions back into a semblance of control.

Beast Boy was stirring. When he was mostly awake, she slid off the branch onto her dark energy disc and set about looking for somewhere more secure to sleep, and something to eat.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Credit to ShinobiCyrus for being beta, for the header quote, and for the photo in the knothole. The journal is the equivalent of one of mine, with the exception that my twin brother periodically steals mine and writes/draws in it. To anyone who thinks you can't sleep in a tree- I've done it. It's quite comfortable unless you roll over or something startles you. Plus my favorite tree was above a bike path, and well, people don't look up. Oh, the prank potential. Of course, I can sleep just about anywhere that isn't on fire, so that doesn't say a whole lot. 

...Reviews?


	13. Edge of Madness

**Disclaimer:** So in the next ten weeks I have to memorize all the different bones of the horse, cat, and dog, be able to recognize them as a part of the skeletal structure, by themselves, in diagrams, and on radiographs, know both the medical and common names, and know all the joints. If any of my brothers tells me how difficult their classes are I'm punching them.

Chapter beta'd by ShinobiCyrus.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_"It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance. It is the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance. It is the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give. And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live."  
- Bette Midler _**  
**

**12.**

**Edge of Madness**

At first, Beast Boy stumbled along beside her as she walked. She'd chosen her direction based on some vague directive whose source she was unsure of. Normally she wouldn't have found that a good reason, but this was Beast Boy's place and quite possibly his directive.

Sure enough, after about fifteen minutes of stumbling along supporting her friend, he straightened up abruptly and stood totally still. Raven stepped back and watched closely as he closed his eyes, lifted his head and sniffed at the air. A moment later he turned again and started off in a swift trot slightly to the left of the game trail they'd been on.

Raven fell in behind him and instinctively matched her pace to his. He led her unerringly to a dense clump of brush, which he knocked aside to reveal a cave opening. He stopped and sniffed again at the entrance, and Raven found herself sniffing with him.

No one had taken over the cave since their- _his_, Raven reminded herself sharply, since _his_- last visit. She was surprised; it was a nice cave. She supposed it was his strange scent that kept them away.

He stopped just inside the cave and stood perfectly still again, head cocked to one side.

Then he began to shake.

Raven darted to his side, alarmed. A confused mess of emotions was swirling down the link as she wrapped one arm around him to steady him. "Beast Boy? Are you all right?" She wanted to hit herself as soon as she asked that, but it _was _the standard question.

"Raven?" Beast Boy replied hoarsely. Raven blinked and quickly knelt as his knees buckled and he started to fall to the ground, kept one arm braced behind his back as he turned towards her. His eyes were still slit, but there was sense in them. "What's…going on?" He licked his lips and winced; it hurt his throat to speak.

"It's…complicated," Raven said tightly. There was a strange thrumming against the back of her skull that she was trying hard to ignore. She started to continue, but Beast Boy cut her off.

"M'head…feels fogged," he said, thickly, shaking his head slightly.

He didn't know how else to explain it. It felt as if thick strands of fog were wrapping their way against each individual thought, dragging them back, away to somewhere remote where they had no attachment to him.

"Beast Boy?"

A whine rose in his throat as he felt himself start to shift and couldn't stop it. He tried to stay- human? Yes, human- and failed. The change hurt, hurt as it hadn't in a long time.

"Beast Boy!"

_Raven?_ He whimpered, but made no attempt to speak. Instead he turned and burrowed into Raven's stomach, clinging tightly to her arms, shuddering with pain. He felt her arms come around him tentatively.

_Hugging me-? Raven, or Starfire?_ he thought dimly. But the cape that drew around him was purple, and the hair that his gaze was directed at was purple, and- it was definitely Raven. His thoughts were tugged back and forth between her scent and the tendrils of gray fog. He flattened his ears, closed his eyes, and felt his claws flex in the fabric of her cape, no longer quite sure what form he was in.

The fog was winning, and he fought to focus. Raven started singing, very softly, ducking her head slightly as her arms tightened. How bad was he for Raven to be so concerned-?

The thought slid from his grasp as she, almost unthinkingly, slid one hand up to scratch lightly behind his ears as she sang. "The game of life is hard to play, you're gonna lose it anyway, the losing card I'll someday lay…"

Her voice was mournful, haunting, exactly the kind of thing he'd expect Raven to sing, and he tried to hang onto that, tried to sink mental claws into that thought, but felt it slipping away into the gray. He heard the words but couldn't concentrate long enough to understand them. Instead he curled up even tighter and let himself fall into the security of her voice, her scent, her cape. The fog won out and just as he slipped into sleep, he thought he smelled salt.

Raven didn't know how long she sat with him cradled in her lap, head bent forward, her cape draped around him. She, too, had closed her eyes, and had barely heard the words she'd sung. She didn't even know what song she'd begun singing.

She needed to look around the cave. She needed to see what, if anything, he had left here. There might not be anything. He might have been planning to stay in an animal form, thereby negating the need for supplies. She searched the linked portion of her mind, but that increased the dull thrumming and she had to stop.

She didn't want to let go of him.

Her legs were cramping, though, and her stomach was starting to protest. She wondered idly when the last time she'd eaten had been.

She glanced down at Beast Boy again. For the second time since she'd met him she saw him caught between transformations- his ears were more catlike than normal, his eyes slit, and a thick black stripe ran across the bridge of his nose at a downward slant. His claws were hooked into her cape, but she wasn't sure if that was transformed claws or "normal" claws.

With a sigh, Raven disentangled herself gently, unclasping her cloak and drawing it more firmly around him. She settled him comfortably against the wall of the cave before looking around.

The cave had many small alcoves around the walls, and a stream trickled through the back via a near-invisible route- running water. Clear, cold running water, she noted, brushing her fingers through it. With a sigh she went to explore the alcoves, hoping she wasn't about to startle any critters out of hiding- _no, I'd be able to smell them-_ well, all right then, hoping she wasn't going to be upset by what she did find.

The first alcove she explored- scattered bolts, a stolen hairbrush that Starfire had been searching for the last few months, the sweater that Cyborg had worn when they met, full of holes and much the worse for wear. Things that carried the scent of their friends. She also found Beast Boy's first communicator- she knew it was his first communicator because she remembered the huge crack that split the screen. It had gotten that way in a fight with Cinderblock. At the back of the 'room' was a stalactite almost as tall as she was. Hanging from it was one of her spare capes. There was also, thankfully, a small box of strike-anywhere matches.

After a moment of hesitation, Raven picked up Cyborg's sweater and pulled it on over her leotard, putting the matches in the pocket. She did snatch up her spare cape, but it would serve better as a blanket.

She started off for the next alcove, but before she could reach it, a whimper from Beast Boy had her at his side. She wasn't entirely sure herself how she'd gotten there so fast, but that wasn't what was important.

What _was_ important was that he was tossing and whimpering in his sleep- a nightmare. Raven eased herself down beside him, drew the spare cape over them both as added warmth, and wrapped her arms around him. He relaxed as he was enveloped in both her scent and Cyborg's, and she wished along with him that Cy was here as well. Close as the Titans were, she, Beast Boy, and Cyborg had a certain camaraderie that stemmed from being "outside looking in" when it came to Star and Robin's relationship.

Some time ago Starfire had come to the garage when Raven and Cyborg were working on the T-Car. Beast Boy had been sitting on the stairs, legs swinging idly back on forth, watching and providing commentary. Star had paused a moment, surprised to see the three of them there rather than just Cyborg- she and Robin had never really grasped how much the other three did together- and then forged on bravely.

She'd been having nightmares and couldn't sleep. She didn't say what they were about, though Raven's lips thinned in remembrance as she thought they had probably been brought about by Trigon's brief reign of terror. She'd been about to suggest Nyquil or meditation, and Cyborg had opened his mouth to suggest something, but Beast Boy had been them both to it- he told her to try sleeping in Robin's room.

They'd stared at him, Cyborg's mouth dropping open, but Starfire thanked him enthusiastically and flounced off. After all, _Star_ didn't have any idea that teenage girls and guys didn't normally sleep in the same room. Nor were any of the others about to enlighten her, for that matter, especially once it became clear that Beast Boy's advice was working…

And that made Raven wonder. How had he come about that advice? Had _he_ been sleeping somewhere else, somewhere he felt safer than his own room? The question-thought reached back into the shared portion of her mind, ensnared a memory and brought it forward. He had. He'd been sneaking into her room or Cyborg's most nights, in various forms, or occasionally coming out here to his cave. Never Robin's room- well, that made sense. After all, Starfire was already in there, and Beast Boy was uncomfortable around Robin. There was nothing of him in the cave either, save that cracked communicator.

For an instant she wondered why. Then a memory assailed her, of Robin's face close to her own, yelling, demanding, _why had she hurt Raven?_ but she couldn't have done that, she would _never_-

Raven tore her consciousness from his, gasping. She shifted so that she was against the wall on two sides, tucked into the closest thing to a corner the cave offered outside its few alcoves, and turned so that Beast Boy was safe between her and the wall. She stretched the second cape over them both so that it covered them from head to foot.

She ignored all the things she had yet to do- gather firewood, food, start a fire, boil water for drinking- in favor of sinking deeper down the mental link and seeking the Gyre. The dark platform with its playground equipment formed in her mind's eye and she relaxed. By the time she realized her mistake, it was too late.

Every time she'd forged any kind of mental connection- through sending her soulself into Robin's mind, through switching bodies with Starfire, through Beast Boy and Cyborg stumbling into Nevermore- it left a kind of psychic trail behind. Normally the channels were dormant. She took care to keep them that way as much as she could; stumbling into someone else's mind was not normally looked on kindly. Of course, the ethical considerations had gone flying out the window with Beast Boy's condition and Starfire's sudden offers of help, so recently she'd been Dreamwalking constantly, had been in Beast Boy's mind almost nightly, had been in Star and Robin's minds as well. The channels weren't dormant any longer.

The channels were _open_.

Wide, wide open, and before she could react Raven was sucked into a maelstrom of thoughts and fears and memories.

An image loomed before her of Trigon using the Tower as a massive armchair and her throat closed and tears sprang to her eyes. That was their _home_ and they had _fought_ for their _home_ and he had _no right_ to be resting on it so. The world swirled about her and she kicked out alongside Slade, reveling in the way the motions flowed even as she pulsed with hatred for the man beside her. He was the enemy as was no one else, he had beaten her and tried to force her to conform to what he wanted, but if it would save Raven she would work- alongside him. Not with him, never with him or for him, but while their goals ran parallel so too would they. Colors ran together and she was scrambling backwards away from _what the hell _is _that thing_ some kind of monster the portal had called up and oh god it had just killed her mother and it was coming for her-

-Raven found the spark that led to the Gyre and hung on with all she had, trying unsuccessfully to draw herself out of the whirling thoughts. She found herself hurled through Starfire's mindscape, startling her soulself, and made a preoccupied observation that all the colors were swirling, caught a glimpse of Red X and another glimpse of something that looked like an iron door framed in blue light, and came to an abrupt stop on the merry-go-round. She hung on for a second while she got her balance, noting that Beast Boy's soulself was also clinging to the contraption and looking dizzy. And interestingly, that the painted metal's colors were bleeding into each other. The wolf moved between her and the soulself and steadied them both.

Another moment to orient herself, and Raven glanced up to see something much more alarming than wandering lights and colors.

She saw Cyborg, Robin, and Starfire staring back at her.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Credit to the items stored in the cave goes to IronRaven. The song Raven is singing is _Suicide is Painless_, the theme to MASH. I'm a big fan of MASH and the song does seem like something she might sing. Couple things I forgot to mention last chapter: Beast Boy's choker is similar to one I wear all the time, only mine wasn't a gift and has to do with working in an animal hospital for plus two years. Also, the song in the previous chapter is Zeromancer's _Dr. Online_. Blame Shadow and the mix CDs he gave me. 

Hopefully, the next chapter will come out in a shorter amount of time, but my schoolwork is insane this quarter so we'll see.

Any fans of Whitewater, go read Five Stories by ShinobiCyrus as well.

...Reviews?


	14. The Way the Wind is Blowing

**Disclaimer:** So I imagine if Cyrus and I ever went to Japan together, someone would occur similar to my seeing Godzilla, screaming "Dragon!" and running towards him, Cy trying to convince me that it's not a dragon it's Godzilla, and me telling him that's close enough for me and continuing on my merry way. Not that this has anything to do with the story or even reality, but it was an entertaining little blurb, now wasn't it?

Beta'd by ShinobiCyrus!

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.  
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr._

**13.**

**The Way the Wind is Blowing **

Robin took a tentative step forward- his duty as leader, after all, was to _lead _them, and clearly the others weren't about to do anything.

The wolf leapt between him and Raven, snarling. Robin pulled a somersault back to his original position almost on instinct and eyed the wolf warily.

Raven stepped forward this time, resting one hand on the wolf's ruff. He twisted his head to look at her and the growl died down into a low whine. _It's okay_, she projected at him, _it's safe._ Not telepathy, but then telepathy wouldn't have worked as well as empathy for a wolf anyway.

"Um, sorry to break things up and all," Cyborg spoke up, leaning slightly on the bars of the blue-metal section, "but _what the hell is going on_?"

Raven settled herself on the metal before answering, making herself comfortable on the purple segment while the wolf laid down beside her, still growling softly. She faced the center of the carousel, and after a moment the others sat down as well, Cyborg bracing his arms along the bars on either side. Beast Boy scooted under the bar and ended up nearly in Raven's lap.

Raven raised an eyebrow at Starfire, who took that as a cue to start trying to explain. That wasn't what Raven had _meant_ but she let Star talk herself into a wall rather than waste time giving her own explanation.

"…and so we are in the Gyre," Starfire concluded swiftly, having succeeded in not actually explaining anything to the boys. Robin stared at her; Cyborg stared expectantly at Raven, clearly wanting her to clarify. Robin seemed to be busy fixating on one particular detail.

"You guys named _my_ mind? _And_ you called it something as cliché as the _Birdcave_?"

"An' you would've called it what, the Fortress of Solitude?" Cyborg asked wryly. "Sorry Rob, the name's been taken. Personally I like the Garage."

"Yeah, well, you would."

Raven stroked the wolf's head and rolled her eyes as Starfire glanced rapidly between the arguing Titans. Beast Boy drew closer and ducked under her cloak and she wrapped one arm around him possessively.

Finally, "Friends, stop!" Starfire commanded sternly. "Beast Boy and Raven are in need of our help and not your arguments."

Beast Boy, actually, was contentedly curled up against Raven's side and purring in a low rumble that she felt more than heard, but Raven chose not to point that out just now. Or…ever.

"Starfire explained things accurately," Raven said curtly. The boys stopped bickering and looked at her. "We have all formed some kind of mental link at one time or another. While they were previously closed, once they were first opened they never truly went away. Now they are all wide open channels, meaning that we not only can currently wander through each other's heads, we will not be able to help it unless we either get more training than I know how to find or close the channels again."

Robin looked horrified. Cyborg looked like someone had just taken a two by four to the back of his head. Neither look was particularly attractive. Raven sighed.

"We need to get out of each other's heads," she informed them. Robin's horrified look turned to one that managed to express "and how the hell do we do _that_?" remarkably well.

"Getting out isn't going to be our biggest problem," Raven continued, absently fiddling with Beast Boy's collar. "Staying out is what's going to…."

…Beast Boy shivered as he felt a slight tug on his collar. A wisp of memory was just out of his grasp, triggered by it, and he didn't know if it was a memory he wanted to remember or not. Her hand ghosted along his neck just below the collar and his eyes slid shut. He tilted his head back without being entirely aware he was doing so. He did _not_ like having anyone tugging on that collar, it made his instincts run first to freezing in place and then to fleeing wildly or turning with a snarl, but before he could act on any of those instincts Raven's hand stilled.

And then they all plunged into a nightmare.

She was standing, staring at the gears on the far walls, and feeling a shivery dread creep up and down her spine. Raven, Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy all sprawled on the ground before her, beaten and bloody, and before she could fully _react_ a hand clamped down on her shoulder and a voice said sibilantly into her ear, "Good work, Apprentice."

She was flying, she was a part of the air itself in the way she moved, and her eyes glowed with warmth and energy that she directed below her to help her friends- but there were starbolts flashing in the fight already, and they were red instead of green, some of them were aimed at her and her friends weren't coming to _help_!

She was strapped to a table, and a dark shape hovered over her- Fix-it? yes, it was definitely Fix-it- and he was tearing something out of her chest and replacing it with something else, and it _hurt_, it _hurt so much_.

She was back beneath the ground, only a child, and helpless to stop Trigon's reign. Her memories of her friends were fuzzy and indistinct, they seemed like stolen memories from a stolen life, and she'd never have a chance to make any more memories because he was going to kill her friends and she couldn't stop him and they couldn't stop him but because they were the Titans they were still going to try.

She was huddled miserably at the side of a violently rocking boat, knees drawn up to her chest and shivering as cold water splashed her, unable to move because a heavy collar and chain held her to the railing, and she wanted King Tawaba or one of the villagers to come help but they couldn't, they were all gone, and what if it was all her fault? A dark shape loomed over her, tugged at the collar and made her entire body tense, and said something laughingly to another dark shape in a language she only half-remembered. She hissed at him, not knowing what else to do, and he laughed harder.

Then she was sprawled on her back in a sunny field, exhausted, her cape pooled around her and Beast Boy snug against her side, and she knew without knowing how she knew that Robin had fled to take refuge in Starfire's mind while she and Cyborg sheltered in Beast Boy's.

Beast Boy huddled a bit closer as Raven sat up and cast her gaze around, eyes settling quickly on Cyborg climbing unsteadily to his feet nearby.

"Rave," Cyborg said, voice thin and stretched, looking both worried and tired, "what just happened?"

"I'm not sure," Raven told him, climbing cautiously to her feet and steadying Beast Boy against her side. She quickly picked out that they were in a clearing in a forest, and that before them were three paths. She glanced at Cyborg quizzically. "Any chance you know what this means?"

"I was kinda hopin' _you_ knew," Cyborg admitted, inspecting the paths himself. The one directly in front of them was by far the easiest, which immediately made Raven distrust it. There was always, _always_, some reason not to take the easiest path. The path to the right was harder, sloping down and following a river through the trees, and the path to the left looked the hardest. It followed a river as well, but the river it followed was much swifter and probably deeper, and the path itself climbed steadily alongside. A strong wind whistled down the leftmost path.

Raven chose the left-hand path with barely a moment's hesitation. Cyborg followed her immediately, and Beast Boy was attached quite solidly to her side. "It's okay," she told him gently as Cyborg came up on his other side. She glanced at Cyborg and raised an eyebrow and he took over.

"It's all right, Beast Boy, we're here together and we'll be okay." It wasn't until Beast Boy glanced back and forth between him and Raven that she remembered he wouldn't be able to hear that and sighed. She translated for Cyborg, and they continued doing so as they walked along the path.

"Why are we on this path?" Cyborg asked her after a while. Raven shrugged a little, careful not to dislodge Beast Boy.

"It's the way the wind was blowing. It's the way my feet seemed to want to go, and with the deep link I have with Beast Boy right now, I saw no reason to disagree." Though the other choices almost certainly would have been easier, she thought wryly. This one was definitely the most interesting, though.

The pathways were odd. She could see the other two choices between the trees, meandering more or less parallel to each other, and noted that the 'easy' path had deteriorated into little more than a game trail. The other path had shortly gone into a much steeper climb than the one they were on; while on this side they were scrambling over boulders and loose shale fairly often, on that side they'd have been in for near-vertical climbing for most of the trek. Besides, alongside this path grew some absolutely fantastic trees and flowers, and once she thought she saw something that looked like a crystal spire in the distance just off the path; this was by_ far_ the most interesting path.

"Raven?" Cyborg's query snapped her out of her thoughts. She'd thought, for a moment, that she saw a flash of green and red and yellow on the far path, a flash of green and purple on the middle.

"Yes?" she asked, shifting some more of Beast Boy's weight onto herself, feeling him start to stumble. Only half her attention was on Cyborg, the rest on making sure Beast Boy didn't fall.

"Where do you think these paths go?"

Raven looked ahead, straining to see through a brilliant blue summer sky. She could see the path winding out before them but nothing that looked like an end to it.

"….I don't know."

"Do you think it leads to the Gyre?" Cyborg ventured hesitantly. The path was starting to become tricky, so Raven split her concentration between answering her friend and placing her feet carefully. She slipped to the side a little and caught herself against Cyborg, who'd positioned himself to keep her and Beast Boy from falling. "I don't know," she said again, and then, "I hope so."

Cyborg sighed and glanced ahead. "D'you think Star and Robin are all right?"

"I think they're both taking refuge in Robin's mind, which for the two of them has to be safer than where we are now," she told him, but she wondered about the flashes of color on the other paths. _Were_ Robin and Starfire safe in the Birdcave? Were the color-flashes something else, something Beast Boy's mind had added to the dream? Or not? It would make sense though- his path being opposite the others, visible but never intersecting…

Lost in her thoughts, Raven missed a step at a crucial moment, and was abruptly yanked back to herself by Cyborg's worried shout and the sudden sensation of sliding swiftly down a slope. She scrambled to get her feet back under her, tightening her grip on Beast Boy, and wasn't having much luck until a green-clad arm was thrust in front of her.

"Here, take it!" someone shouted over the wind- and when had the wind picked up so much, anyway?- and Raven looked up and grasped Brave's hand as the emotion yanked them both up onto solid ground. Cyborg, seeing they were out of danger, made the leap himself.

"What just happened?" Cyborg asked after a moment. Raven looked around and recognized the surroundings quite well; they were in Brave's section of Nevermore, where the path ran into one that had already existed in Raven's mind.

"Brave!" Beast Boy said abruptly, and stumbled from Raven's arms into that of her emotions, who looked down at him and ruffled his hair fondly.

"I think we just crossed the protection Beast Boy set up for Nevermore," she replied slowly. She stared at the way Beast Boy was nestling trustingly up to Brave, showing more reaction than he had for anything else she'd tried. She was definitely going to have to get him into Nevermore…

"Right on!" Brave cheered, pumping her free arm in the air. "But you can't stay here- go on, get back to your own bodies!"

"I'll have to bring him back here," Raven warned Brave, and the emotion smiled.

"I know," she assured Raven. Then she shoved them, both physically and mentally, and the contact was broken.

Interrupted, rather, because when Raven opened her eyes back in their cave she could still feel tenuous threads linking their thoughts to the other Titans. Between her and the changeling nestled at her side, there was a much stronger current. He curled closer and smiled up at her, back to his normal form. "Raven," he said tiredly. "S'gonna be okay, right?"

Raven ruffled his hair herself and closed her eyes with a smile, relaxing and listening to the sounds aroound them. The ends of a rainstorm dripped off the branches outside, lending a fresh smell to the air, and a stripe of sunlight fell warm against her face. Birds sang somewhere nearby. She felt as though she'd finally emerged from a dark tunnel. He still sounded off, sounded too young and too trusting and not very much like himself, but he was better than before. She sighed deeply and wrapped both arms around him tightly, inhaling deeply.

"Yes, Beast Boy," she told him, confidence increasing as she spoke. "It's going to be okay."

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** So this is what happens when I get addicted to tea and abruptly lose the ability to worry about anything...huh. ShinobiCyrus came up with the idea for Robin's nightmare, though the others and the Pathways dream are mine. Beast Boy's reaction to anyone messing with his collar is because I wear a choker with dog tags- _dog_ dog tags, not military- and people like to assume they have the right to mess with it. This upsets me. A lot. The Pathways dream is a variation on my main recurring dream, except that I've never actually made it to the end of the path before waking, I'm having too much fun exploring. Embellishing on BB's past, again, but not making it up.

So! Reviews?... I think I'm getting closer to the end here, but this story absolutely loves to veer off in directions I hadn't intended.


	15. Dream It Into Life

**Disclaimer: ** Yes, I know this has taken forever plus several days. I apologize; real life decided it would be fun to drag me down and _beat me over the head_ repeatedly. And painfully.

Beta'd by ShinobiCyrus!

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around."  
Leo F. Buscaglia quotes _

**14. Dream It Into Life****  
**

He could happily have stayed right where he was for the rest of forever, if something hadn't been digging into his neck.

He pulled away slightly from- Raven, he remembered. Raven wrapped in Cyborg's old sweater and smelling like home. It was the raven-tag on the collar that was digging into his neck, as well. He frowned.

…When had he begun wearing a collar with a raven-tag? When had he begun wearing a _collar_ at all? He'd never have put one on willingly! _Raven_ had put it on him, he recalled abruptly, and it sent his thoughts screeching to a halt for a moment. He freed one hand to feel around the band of metal- no catch. That almost made him panic, except that it was Raven who'd put it on, and she _had_ to have had a reason.

Right?

He thought a little harder, and found that while the tendrils of fog in his mind had begun clearing, burned through lightly by what almost felt like sunlight, the fog threatened to come back when his thoughts strayed from Raven. He didn't know if that bare fact was alarming, or the way it didn't actually bother him all that much was alarming.

He was here, in his cave, with his Raven. How did she know to find his cave? He didn't remember telling her. Actually…what _was _the last thing he remembered?

_The …carnival? Mumbo's carnival?_ That sounded right. There were memories after that, but -scattered, interrupted, nothing cohesive. Nothing after that conversation with Raven, or rather nothing that wasn't interspersed with- bursts of white light, or something very like it. An interruption in his memory. He'd had the same kind of interruption before…but he had been the Beast then…

Raven stirred slightly in her sleep and Beast Boy froze as a surge of emotion welled from within him. And- it was another throwback to the Beast, a surge of _protect Raven, _and some small part of his mind noted that he should tell Raven of these similarities when he got the chance. Whenever that might be.

Not any time soon, clearly. Raven was as soundly asleep as he'd ever seen her, short of injury. Sighing, he curled closer to her, taking comfort in her scent and the sound of her heartbeat, and dropped back into sleep himself.

_I hear music._

Raven turned and took a step towards the sound. Light sprang and spread from where her feet touched, rippling out into the expanse of darkness before fading away into the black. She took another step and watched the light ripples come again. She leaned forward and began to run, catching brief glimpses of someone ahead of her, someone in a lavender cloak. Light fell in sparkles and waves all around her, so that the faster she ran the brighter it became.

She caught a glimpse of a laughing face- of her own face, cloaked in lavender. She felt her feet leave the ground as she tipped into freeflight, then watched as the ground fell away and showed her the clouds blazing in the sunset far below her. And just above the clouds, two shapes, lavender and green, wheeling through the air at speeds she had to strive to match. Affection and a green peregrine falcon, outflying each other on the edge of a roaring thunderstorm. As she watched he shifted to a raven larger than any she had ever seen in nature and flew into Affection's arms for a fraction of a second, then spun away into a dive as lightning crackled in between them. Rain started sheeting down so that she watched them through a shimmering curtain.

Suddenly Raven burst through something barely tangible and unidentifiable and on the other side the night landscape recurred. The forms below her flew faster and she realized belatedly that they were _all_ speeding up past what she had ever thought possible. Lightning cracked again, this time forking around the two below, and night flashed back into dawn-then day-then twilight-then night- and the world around her was blurring.

She could still hear the music. No words, just a high, wild piping that seemed to ride on the waves of the storm.

Another sudden burst, and she saw them, even farther below, and finally still. Affection was curled up on her side with one hand buried affectionately in his hair, Beast Boy curled contentedly up to her. They were resting at the base of a tree in the park- she could see the field where Robin and Cyborg played ball.

The world tipped askew, and she looked at herself in blue and gray in a cave, Beast Boy wearing a collar and smaller, but still in the same position. And as she jarred back to reality and fell to her body, she heard words in the song at last- "_Dream it into life_."

Raven woke with a sharp gasp and her eyes immediately sought the top of Beast Boy's head, nestled beneath her chin. He was shivering slightly and her eyes softened as she pulled the spare cape over him more firmly and overlapped it with her own. She closed her eyes again and _willed _them into Nevermore as strongly as she could.

This time, when she opened her eyes, she smiled slightly at the sight of Air-Freshener Land-Happy had gleefully renamed this particular corner of her mindscape after Beast Boy and Cyborg's visit. She glanced around swiftly and saw that Happy had immediately caught Beast Boy up in a hug, swinging him around her in the air and laughing wildly. "BB! It's good to see you!"

Raven smiled.

Then she stepped forward and caught him in a hug herself, sandwiching him between herself and Happy. He glanced up at her inquisitively and something in her chest ached sharply at the look in his eyes.

_Too young,_ she thought unhappily. _His eyes look too young._ She locked eyes with Happy. "Go get the others, will you?"

Happy nodded, well, happily, and sped off, leaving Raven with her arms around Beast Boy.

"Raven," Beast Boy said- his voice held that carefree warmth he had lost so long ago- and her arms tightened around him convulsively. She forced herself to loosen her grasp and looked down at him.

"…Yeah?"

"I.." He glanced around. "Thank you."

Raven blinked. "What?"

"For," he freed one arm and gestured vaguely, "Y'know…Everything. And for bringing me here."

Raven blinked again, then held him at arm's length and looked at him searchingly. "Are you… all right, now?" she asked hesitantly. She didn't see how that could be possible, not in so short a time.

"No," he admitted, somewhat to her relief. She wouldn't have trusted so speedy a recovery. "Better, but…there are…there are gaps in my thinking, sort of." He frowned, but whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the arrival of her emotions.

Happy immediately launched herself at the two of them again, and only the fact that Raven was still holding Beast Boy slightly apart from herself enabled her to catch the exuberant emotion. "BBRavenBB!" Happy enthused, before breaking apart and whirling in a circle. "Guys, she brought BB to play!"

Raven glanced at Wisdom and Knowledge with a raised eyebrow and a silent plea for patience. Smiling, Wisdom moved in and gently took Happy by the arm, steering her off to the side- and Raven and Beast Boy were left facing Affection.

Affection crossed her arms and caught Raven in a staredown immediately. After about a minute, Raven winced, then broke her gaze away and looked back at Beast Boy.

"Gar," she said gently, "this is…uh…this is Affection. She wants to talk with you."

Beast Boy's eyes widened and his eyes shot back and forth between them.

Affection stepped forward and took him gently in her lavender-clad arms, and after a wide-eyed and panicky minute, he relaxed and then turned in her embrace to glance trustingly and inquisitively at Raven. She felt something in her snap at his eyes, so full of light, at seeing those near-glowing eyes and knowing she was working to put the shadows back into them.

But the shadows are a part of who he is, are they not? Affection asked her. And you want that person back. The person his experiences have made him.

_Of _course_ I want him back!_ Raven replied immediately, anguished, and Affection smiled very slightly and very knowingly. _Of course I want him back_, Raven repeated silently, slower.

Affection's smile grew.

Why do you want him back, Raven?

_Because, I… _

Raven faltered.

Why, Raven?  
_…I…_

You can say it, you know. Safe in your mindscapes.

_But the others, they're connected…_

And safe, Affection reminded her. Their own minds defenses' will protect them.

_…I love him the way he_ was. _I love him the way he _really is_. I _love_ him_.

A whisper-laugh answered her and the cord between her mind and his snapped taut.

She had felt Robin's thoughts brushing at the very edge of her mind before, and she had grown accustomed to it, even welcomed the reminder that she was not alone. Beast Boy was different. Beast Boy was wild, incandescent, was the spirit of mischief dancing giddily along the back of her skull like he _belonged_ there.

She _wanted_ him to belong there.

And suddenly she knew, knew with a certainty she could never have explained, for prescience had never numbered among her abilities, that he would always _be_ there- for as long as she would allow him to, or longer.

_That can't be right_, she said wordlessly, but Affection looked up and met her eyes and nodded slightly. Raven narrowed her eyes. That was no healing, and healing was all she had been trying to do for him since this had begun.

He is beyond healing, Affection told her, still in that language which went beyond words. Affection didn't need words, had never needed words. Affection drew Beast Boy- Garfield- closer to herself, hugged him tightly and let the love she felt for him flow through the link into his mind, healing as much as it was still possible to heal. The damage ran too deep, ran all the way back to Africa, she realized that now- but she would do, had done, as much as possible.

Something in her world was shifting, changing, tipping so far out of balance that it could never be returned to its original state, as inexorable as the tide. She used to think it was as unchanging and immovable as mountains.

Mountains wear down, over time, Affection said, calmly, implacably. And when they do, they change.

_I know._

Raven waited to wake up, as she was accustomed to doing after revelations like this, but it didn't happen. Instead Affection whispered something to Beast Boy, a sound more like bells than words, and pushed him back over to Raven. She caught him without thinking about it.

You need to allow yourself time to heal, as well, Affection chastised gently.

Reluctantly, Raven nodded.

You need a therapist as much as the rest of our family, Affection continued on implacably.

Raven winced and tightened her arms around Beast Boy, not wanting to acknowledge the truth in that statement. Well… some of that truths. Some of them, she was only _too_ happy to acknowledge.

He is not the only one beyond healing, Affection said softly, and something glimmered in the depths of her eyes for an instant. All our family has been deeply hurt, in one way or another, and there are some hurts which will never heal. You can only help each other past them, day to day to day.

Raven nodded.

Now, you need to say it to him.

Raven's eyes widened fractionally.

He needs to hear it, you know. He needs to hear it or he won't believe it. In fact- Affection's smile grew again- he'll need to hear it more than once, but this will have to be the start.

Raven took a deep breath. Then another, and another. _ It shouldn't be so hard to say three words,_ she thought with something that was almost amusement and almost hysteria, and then she let her eyes meet Beast Boy's and let her mouth form the words and let her voice fill in the sounds her lips shaped.

"…I… love you… Beast Boy."

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko: **See? Not dead! There will be another chapter after this, though it will likely be very much an epilogue. 


	16. Epilogue

**Disclaimer:** I'm really sorry y'all, my life hit a really busy point. I'm still kind of in transition between stages of it. Anyway, here it is way later than expected- the epilogue to Hearts.

**One Which Makes the Heart Run Over**

_Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. _

_-Dale Carnegie_

**Epilogue: Learn to Fly**

Raven felt like her entire world should have swung around on its axis when she spoke those three words. _I love you_. The world didn't, of course. For one thing, even though it was the first time she'd spoken the words, she realised now it wasn't the first time she'd expressed them.

She'd been telling Beast Boy she loved him since this whole mess had begun.

She'd only needed to say it.

When they woke up in the cave, it was almost anti-climactic. Beast Boy yawned, stretched, woke up in her arms and changed back to human. When he smiled up at her it was a real smile, with all the shadows that made her love him back in place.

Raven could still feel him in the back of her mind. She knew from what Affection had said that she always would. It was toned down a lot, now- her barricades were back up, and somehow Beast Boy had finally learned to build them. Affection had probably shown him how, now that Raven thought about it.

"Raven," Beast Boy said, sounding perfectly normal. "Let's go home."

It wasn't perfect, because the world just didn't work like that.

It was close though.

They flew home, Raven on dark energy while Beast Boy took the form of a red-tailed hawk. Raven could sense him getting nervous when they got closer, but she used their mental link to reassure him wordlessly. He sent back gratitude.

Robin was waiting for them at the Tower entrance. He didn't say a word when they landed. Instead, he crushed Raven in a brief hug, then turned to Beast Boy. There was a moment's hesitation, but the thought-channels between all the Titans were still not quite closed, and when Beast Boy felt Robin's regret and sense of responsibility he stepped into an even briefer embrace.

Then, of course, Starfire had to fly out and bruise both their ribs with hugs, and then nothing would do but that Cyborg did the same.

Some experimentation found that whatever Affection had done had negated the effects of the collar, so Raven snapped it off and set it on a shelf in her room. It seemed surreal when, a few minutes later, the entire team found themselves sitting around the couch together.

Starfire broke the silence. "It is good to be together again, friends."

"Yeah," Robin smiled behind his mask. "Yeah, it is."

"And hey, now it'll be a _lot_ _easier_ to explain what I'm tryin' to get across when we're workin' on the T-car!" Cyborg grinned.

"Yeah." Beast Boy grinned sheepishly down at his hands, then cleared his throat. "I'm, uh, really sorry about all this, guys."

He was met with a chorus of protest, but looked up at Raven when she laid a hand on his back.

"Don't be," she said firmly. "This wasn't your fault. We should have noticed something was wrong." She met the eyes of each of the other Titans in turn. "From now on, we'll keep a closer eye on each other." A ragged chorus of agreement met her statement.

There was a comfortable silence for several long minutes then, each of them lost in their own thoughts, but still aware of the other Titan's muted emotions in the back of their minds.

Finally Robin stirred. "Are we okay with this?"

No one had to ask what he meant. Cyborg shrugged. "For now, yeah. I think it might get a little irritating down the road though," he cast a meaningful look at the paired-up Titans. "We should definitely learn how to control it."

"But we're okay with having this… this mental affinity, or whatever it is?" Robin persisted. "It doesn't creep anyone out too much?"

"I like it," Starfire put in. "It is a very reassuring link to my friends."

"This is gonna be so weird," Cyborg said thoughtfully.

It was. It took some getting used to. It was strange to have Raven hand him a wrench before he'd asked for it, to see the way Robin and Starfire would disappear together with no audible discussion, to experience battles where they could anticipate the other's moves even farther ahead of time than they could before. It was frightening. It was exhilarating.

Eventually the channels wore their own paths, so that Robin and Starfire were more attuned to each other, and Beast Boy and Raven were more in sync, and so that Beast Boy and Raven and Cyborg together had their own private understandings. After a while Robin was freaked out enough by it that he learned to shield his mind better than before, only letting the shields down when he felt comfortable enough to do so. Beast Boy let his shields down whenever he felt depressed and the others took a cue from that.

Beast Boy and Cyborg also kept trying to use the channels to cheat against each other at video games, which Raven privately- or as privately as possible- thought was vastly entertaining.

Their lives would never be normal again.

But then, their lives had never been normal in the first place.

* * *

**GuardianSaiyoko:** Annnd that's all folks. Sorry it's short, but like I said in the waybackwhen, this really is an epilogue. It just took forever to get a feel for it. I have one last confession to make before I'm off to other things, and that is: I wrote this on a dare. Seriously. Cy dared me to try my hand at Teen Titans fanfiction forever and a day ago, so I went for it, and I never expected it to go over so well. Thanks for everything, all of you. You've no idea how it brightens my day even now to open my e-mail and see alerts and faves and reviews in there. It's been a long, slow, crazy ride.

-Saiyoko


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